Sitting inside locked car for 30 mins can prove fatal: Doctors

Visakhapatnam: On January 19 earlier this year, a 26-year-old cab driver died of suffocation in Noida inside his car because of smoke from burning coal that he had kept on a grate under the dashboard to keep himself warm.
A year before, on June 9, a 28-year-old businessman and his girlfriend were found dead inside a car, which was parked in the garage of the man’s house in Bengaluru.Postmortem revealed the duo had died of suffocation. On August 30, 2017, a 38-year-old lawyer was found dead inside his car near Sion in Mumbai. The street was waterlogged that day and he was waiting inside his locked car for the water level to subside, which may have caused suffocation, leading to his death.
It is dangerous to sit inside a locked car. It is even more dangerous when the air-conditioning is on. Car exhaust emits carbon dioxide and carbon monoxide gases (in case the AC is on) that might kill an adult instantly. “If you sit inside a locked car for 30 minutes, you would feel suffocated. This is because there is no fresh air inside a locked car and what you inhale is actually carbon dioxide,” said Somendro Mohan Ghosh, an automobile expert and green activist.
If the air-conditioning system inside the car is on, one should ensure that the road is free from congestion. In case there is bumper to bumper traffic, the driver should roll down the glass so that fresh air can enter the vehicle. “The car air-conditioning system takes in fresh air from outside, cools it and circulates the cool air inside. A vehicle emits polluted air from its tail pipe. In the case of bumper to bumper traffic, the system sucks in polluted air emitted by the vehicle in front, which increases the level of carbon monoxide inside the car and slowly poisons its occupants,” added Ghosh.
Though modern cars are fitted with auto-operating system for air-conditioning, which filters the air before cooling it, it’s still not safe. “Despite the filtration process, you can’t say if the air inside the car is 100% carbon monoxide or carbon dioxide free,” says Surath Sarkar, an assembling engineer working with an automobile major.
Doctors say the problem with carbon monoxide is that it is colourless, odourless and tasteless. “So, inhalers don’t have an idea that he or she is actually inhaling poison. If inhaled, carbon monoxide combines with haemoglobin, leading to formation of carboxyhemoglobin, which reduces the flow of oxygen to body parts and causes seizure. Eventually, death can occur,” says Dr Sasmit Sarkar, a pulmonologist.