ABSTRACT
After alcohol and some pharmaceutical drugs, carbon monoxide (CO) poisoning is probably the most common toxic condition to be met with in routine forensic pathology.1 The widespread introduction of natural gas (which contains no CO) as a replacement for ‘coal gas’ as a heating fuel has removed a major source of the poison. Monoxide still provides lethal dangers in many other ways, however. It is produced whenever fossil fuels are incompletely oxidized to carbon dioxide and, because of its great affinity for haemoglobin, even low concentrations can be cumulative.
