Doctors: Hotels need carbon monoxide alarms

• Few rooms in 51,214 lodging properties with at least 15 rooms have CO alarms
• From 2010 through Nov. 8, 2102, there were 30 incidents elevated CO at U.S. hotels
• More than 1,300 people were evacuated; eight fatalities involved

Neil Hampson was inside his room at a lodge in Alaska during a salmon fishing vacation three years ago when his carbon monoxide alarm sounded.

Hampson, a Seattle doctor and expert on carbon monoxide, went to the basement and found the CO level four times higher. He says he turned off the gas for the water heater, and CO levels throughout the building "dropped precipitously."

A plumber later found that the water heater was improperly vented, he says, and the lodge owner installed CO alarms in each sleeping room. Guests and staff at the lodge near Alaska's Kenai River were fortunate Hampson carries an alarm which detects the odorless, colorless poison gas that can cause brain damage or be lethal.

Guests in rooms at nearly all hotels, motels and other lodgings in the U.S. might not be as fortunate. Few of the roughly 4.9 million rooms in 51,214 lodging properties with at least 15 rooms have alarms.

Only a handful of state or municipal laws require them, although more than 1,300 people were evacuated nationally from hotels because of high CO levels in recent years.

CO, often called "the silent killer," is such a threat that the National Fire Protection Association says CO alarms should be near bedrooms in every home.

From 2010 through Nov. 8, 2102, there were 30 incidents of fire departments or government officials finding elevated levels of CO at U.S. hotels, a USA TODAY analysis of more than 1,000 media reports and interviews with local fire departments found.

In the 30 incidents, more than 1,300 people were evacuated, eight died, and at least 170 were affected by CO, treated by medical personnel or hospitalized.

The numbers are probably low because news media accounts often don't state the total number of people evacuated or treated.

Lindell Weaver, a professor of medicine at the University of Utah, used similar research methods for a 2007 study that found 68 incidents involving 27 deaths and 772 people "poisoned" by CO from 1989 through 2004 in hotels, motels and resorts.

Weaver says more incidents occur in hotels than can be found by media searches.

A look back

Incidents reported in the news media in recent years include:

About 180 people were evacuated on Oct. 24 and about 55 others on Nov. 6 at the Courtyard Marriott in Burlington, Vt., because of high CO levels.

One guest died, 16 others were taken to a hospital and the Holiday Inn Express in South Charleston, W.Va., was evacuated on Jan. 31 after carbon monoxide leaked into the hotel from a swimming pool heater.

Five teenagers celebrating a birthday were killed in a guest room at the Presidente Hotel in Hialeah, Fla., in December 2010 after they left a car running in the motel's garage.

Tom Daly, a consultant for the American Hotel & Lodging Association, says CO incidents are rare, so there's no need for laws requiring hotels to have alarms.

"You have a better chance of being struck by lightning than being hit with CO poisoning," Daly says.

Weaver says his study proves CO poisoning in hotels is much more frequent than getting struck by lightning.

"Lightning strikes occur, but invariably, only one person is hit," he says. "Hotel CO can harm dozens at a time, and, unlike lightening, the hotel has a duty to protect its guests."

Few have alarms

A 2012 report by the National Fire Protection Association says 81,100 non-fire carbon monoxide incidents were reported to U.S. fire departments in 2010, and more than 90% occurred in "residential properties."

The association recommends a CO alarm near each bedroom in a home but has not made such a recommendation for hotels.

The association, though, says some new hotels — those with guest rooms with attached garages or a fuel-burning appliance — should be equipped with CO alarms outside each such room.

Daly says few hotels meet that criteria.

USA TODAY asked major hotel chains to identify hotels with CO alarms for every room. Most didn't respond, and none named a single hotel with such equipment.

Placing an alarm in every U.S. hotel room would cost about $250 million, or about $100 per room, Daly estimates. That cost would recur every five years, because each alarm is only effective that long, he says.

Robert Rosenthal, a doctor at the University of Maryland's School of Medicine who recently paid a $28-a-night "resort charge" at a Las Vegas hotel, says the $100-a-room cost is "the worst argument I have ever heard" for not installing alarms.

"Add $1 per night onto the resort charge, and the cost of a CO alarm would be paid for in three nights," Rosenthal says.

"It's a reasonable idea to have a CO alarm for each room, although the chance of CO poisoning happening is unlikely," he says.

States that have laws requiring CO alarms in hotels have come up with "a solution in search of a problem," Daly says. Such laws are "regulation run amuck at a significant cost to the industry."

Weaver doesn't buy the argument that the alarms aren't needed because incidents are rare. A large number of people can be affected at once in an incident, he says.

He points out that hotel fires also are rare. "How many fires are there in hotels?" he asks. "Yet, every room has a smoke detector."

In several years, the debate on whether CO alarms should be installed in all hotel guest rooms could be moot. For the first time, Daly says, the International Building Codes (IBC) and the International Fire Codes (IFC) require new and existing hotels to install CO alarms in all guest rooms or "a CO detection system in all common areas."

All states adopt the IBC, 44 states adopt the IFC, and cities and counties "typically" adopt these codes, Daly says. It usually takes one to three years after the codes are published for states and local jurisdictions to adopt them, he says.