This year’s summer camp season is over, and you’ve brought joy to hundreds or thousands of children and an incredible experience to staff members. Congratulations! Now it’s time to start thinking about next summer and the steps you can take to protect the people you will be serving.

One big — and preventable — threat to campers is carbon monoxide (CO) poisoning. CO is a colorless, odorless gas found in the fumes that are produced any time you burn fuel in furnaces, vehicles, or other pieces of equipment. It can build up indoors and poison the people who are breathing it, which is why it is often called the “silent killer.” At low concentrations, CO can lead to fatigue in healthy people and chest pains in people who suffer from heart disease. If a person breathes in enough CO, it can be fatal.

If you don’t already have specific preventive measures in place to avoid CO poisoning, now is a good time to start. You can create policies and procedures over the winter — well before your camp is again filled with young people — and present a safer, more prepared program to your campers and their parents.

Provide Training on Carbon Monoxide

First, it’s important to know why CO is such a risk. When you breathe it in, it binds to your blood’s hemoglobin with an affinity 200–250 times more than oxygen. Your body then replaces the oxygen in its red blood cells with carbon monoxide, which can lead to a death similar to suffocation.

During your precamp training period, you should educate all staff members about CO poisoning and how to recognize it. Some people can mistake CO poisoning for heat stroke.

Signs of carbon monoxide poisoning include:

• Headache
• Dizziness
• Nausea
• Flu-like symptoms
• Tightness across the chest
• Shortness of breath
• Drowsiness
• Fatigue

If a staff member suspects one or more people are suffering from CO poisoning, they should immediately remove them from the area (for example, if they are in a tent, they should exit into the fresh air). Then they should call 911.

How Campers Can Be Exposed to CO

Of course, the best treatment for CO poisoning is not to experience it in the first place. You have a lot of control over that, and it starts with taking extra precautions when necessary.

At a summer camp, CO poisoning could occur in buildings — or it could happen outside, in places where you wouldn’t expect an issue. The following are a few of the situations in which campers and staff members could fall prey to carbon monoxide:

• Camping — While tents may feel like they’re mostly outdoors, they create enough of an enclosed space that they could represent a significant danger of poisoning. You should never use gas or propane stoves inside a tent because there’s not enough proper ventilation.
• Boats — If you plan to take people out on the water, be aware of the exhaust area at the end of the boat. A person who sits close to that area and breathes in the fumes for any length of time could become sick or even lose consciousness because of CO poisoning. The best way to avoid those fumes is not to sit or swim anywhere near that area. You should also be aware of the fumes from any neighboring boats and park well out of the direction any fumes are heading.
• Backup generators — The summer months are notorious for frequent power outages, especially during severe weather. At some point during your season, you may need to use a backup generator to provide power for your campers. Be aware that gas-powered generators can cause CO to build up inside a facility, and never use them indoors.
• Space heaters and other heating appliances in your buildings — Most CO poisoning happens in the winter, the most common source being unvented space heaters. But winter isn’t the only time it gets cold. You may find you need to use space heaters during the summer, which can be dangerous because a space heater vents the gases it makes into the building, instead of outdoors. Newer models of space heaters have a safety feature that shuts it off when the oxygen level in the room falls below a certain level, but older models don’t. The best way to avoid CO poisoning is to only use fuel-burning space heaters in well-ventilated areas. (Electrical space heaters do not cause CO poisoning.)
• Campfires — While campfires promote a sense of camaraderie and fellowship, they can also be deadly in many different ways. If campers or staff are sitting too close to the fire, or if they are directly in the path of the smoke from the fire, they are in danger of carbon monoxide poisoning. It’s important to keep a close eye on anyone who is spending time around a fire.

Recognizing the Signs of a CO Problem

While it’s difficult to physically see the danger of CO when you’re around a campfire or taking campers on a boat, you can more easily spot problems inside buildings. The signs of a CO problem in an enclosed structure include:

• Streaks of soot around fuel-burning appliances
• Excess moisture found on windows, walls, or other cold surfaces
• Excessive rust on flue pipes, other pipe connections, or appliance jacks
• Orange or yellow flames (should be blue) in the combustion appliances
• Small amounts of water leaking from the base of the chimney vent or flue pipe
• Damaged or discolored bricks at the top of the chimney

The single best way to ensure you are alerted to a CO problem in time, though, is to have a carbon monoxide detector in every building that could possibly have a fuel-burning appliance. Make sure your device is certified to the most current Underwriters Laboratory (UL) standard 2034 or the International Approval Services (IAS) 6-96 standard.

What to Do if You Have a CO Problem in One or More of Your Buildings

If you notice one or more of the preceding signs of a CO problem in a building, or if your CO alarm alerts you to a problem, the first step is to evacuate everyone from the facility.

Then call emergency services, which will send personnel to determine what the source of the carbon monoxide is and tell you what you need to do to make your building safe again. It could be a simple solution, such as turning off the gas burner on a stove, or you may need to completely remove an appliance from the building.

Why You Need Insurance Protection

Even when you take every precaution and inspect every appliance regularly, there’s still a possibility one of your campers or a staff member could experience CO poisoning. That’s where a good insurance policy comes in.

he most common types of insurance that provide protection against carbon monoxide poisoning claims include comprehensive general liability policies, umbrella coverage, and excess liability policies. However, you shouldn’t assume that just because you have insurance, a situation such as CO poisoning is covered.

Talk to your insurance agent about which scenarios are covered, what your limits are, and whether you have enough coverage based on the value of your camp and buildings.

CO poisoning may not be something you think about very often, but it’s real — and it can be deadly. If you haven’t taken the proper precautions yet, use this off-season to make a plan. 

Eric Spacek is the assistant vice president — risk control for Church Mutual Insurance Company, S.I.