McCammon said, "After the investigation of his death. He was overcome by CO and sank - even though he was a water polo player who could tread water for an hour without a break. That is holding onto the rear of a slow-moving boat and riding the wake. After graduating high school in 2001, Chad Ethington of Centerville was "teak surfing" behind a boat. She and Baron found CO poisoning was occurring with many other types of motorboats.Īnother tragedy would bring more action. Recalls were issued and boats were redesigned.īut McCammon said problems were not just with houseboats. In 2001, the Coast Guard issued an advisory on houseboats of similar design. When she began testing CO levels in cavities under houseboat swim platforms, she found concentrations that could be lethal after brief exposure. She is an industrial hygienist with the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health. That and press attention brought McCammon in to help investigate. Two good swimmers dying together by an exhaust vent convinced Baron that CO was causing similar deaths. Despite quick rescue, the boys could not be revived.Īutopsies found lethal levels of CO in their blood. Their mother looked through a peephole in the swim deck just as one boy sank. Things changed in 2000 when two boys from Colorado - 11-year-old Dillon Dixey and his 8-year-old brother, Logan - went swimming under the rear swimming platform on their houseboat on Lake Powell as a generator pumped exhaust under it. Baron then began years of pushing the Coast Guard and National Park Service to help with more detailed investigations and to campaign for a redesign of boats. The medic said houseboats had generators for air conditioning and electricity, and they vented into water at the rear of boats.īaron said the first confirmed case came in 1995 when a 12-year-old drowned at the rear of a houseboat, and an autopsy found high CO levels in his blood. Baron questioned how that could be for boats that were stationary with no motors running. Many of them had been at the rear of boats, and officials were unsure what was happening. "By the time they arrived, they had fully regained consciousness but couldn't remember anything," he said. Robert Baron, medical adviser for Glen Canyon National Recreation Area, said the saga began when medics in the early 1990s started receiving calls for people who had passed out. "I have no doubt that the number (of CO boating deaths) that are actually happening is much, much larger than the number that is being identified and reported," she told the Morning News.ĭr. So she extrapolates from work at Powell and by tracking a growing list of accidental drownings nationwide that show signs of CO poisoning. "But that is a big guess," she adds, saying other areas often do not test for carbon monoxide poisoning in blood of "drowning" victims as doctors at Lake Powell have learned to do. "There could be as many as 250 boat-related drownings per year (nationally) that are carbon monoxide poisoning first," says Jane McCammon, one of the scientists who identified the problem. But continuing work begun at Lake Powell suggests carbon monoxide still may be an unrecognized mass killer nationwide. Stubborn detective work identified the problem and made initially reluctant agencies act to correct boat design. Their real killer was carbon monoxide (CO) from the exhaust of engines and houseboat generators, sometimes found in concentrations so high behind boats that lethal amounts could be inhaled literally in seconds, making victims fall unconscious and drown or die from CO poisoning itself. They were part of a mystery that saw excellent swimmers unexpectedly sink and die, sometimes after just moments in the water. An invisible killer stalked the waters of Lake Powell for years, causing nearly half of the "drownings" reported there.
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