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Carbon monoxide poisoning has been tied to several traveler deaths. Here's how to stay safe on your trips

Carbon monoxide poisoning has been tied to several traveler deaths. Here's how to stay safe on your trips

CNN03-04-2025

Carbon monoxide, often called the 'silent killer,' has no taste, odor or color, yet prolonged inhalation of the invisible gas has been tied to the recent deaths of several American tourists traveling abroad.
In March, 14-year-old Miller Gardner, son of former New York Yankees player Brett Gardner, died on a family vacation at a Costa Rica beach resort. A month prior, three American women were discovered dead in their Belize hotel room. In both cases, authorities have said carbon monoxide poisoning caused the deaths.
While many homes in the U.S. are equipped with alarms that detect the presence of the dangerous gas, travelers may need to take extra precautions to limit their exposure on the road.
Carbon monoxide is produced when natural gas is burned in appliances like boilers, pool heaters, gas stoves, fireplaces and dryers, according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.
'Every carbon monoxide producing appliance is designed to take those toxic fuels out of the building,' said Charon McNabb, founder of the National Carbon Monoxide Awareness Foundation.
Without regular maintenance, McNabb said venting systems can corrode or shift, creating leak pathways for carbon monoxide to remain trapped indoors. The gas is then capable of traveling into nearby rooms through drywall, doors and air ducts.
A buildup of carbon monoxide in the air can diminish your ability to absorb oxygen, resulting in serious or fatal tissue damage to the brain, heart and muscles.
According to a 2019 study published in the journal Preventive Medicine Reports, 905 U.S. lodging guests were poisoned by carbon monoxide from 2005 to 2018, resulting in 22 deaths.
In the U.S., requirements for carbon monoxide detectors in homes and hotels differ by state, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures.
While vacation rental platforms like VRBO and Airbnb only require listed units to meet local regulations, owners can indicate whether a carbon monoxide alarm is present on the property within their listings.
McNabb advises travelers booking accommodations to call ahead of their stay to check for the presence of detectors in each guest room and ask about the location of their room within the building.
'Travelers may want to stay away from (rooms next to) pools and pool heaters because typically, the chemicals for the pools are kept in the mechanical room where the heater is stored, and those chemicals can corrode the metal much quicker, creating leak paths,' McNabb said, adding that rooms on higher floors can also provide a safer distance from gas-powered yard equipment.
'If you're not totally confident in the answers you get, play it safe and bring your own (carbon monoxide) alarm,' McNabb said.
Portable alarms are battery or outlet powered, pocket-sized devices capable of monitoring CO levels and alerting the user of unsafe levels. TSA permits travelling with carbon monoxide alarms, but lithium batteries should be taken out of the device and placed in carry-on luggage.
Kos Galatsis, CEO of Forensics Detectors, which sells air quality monitoring devices, suggests travelers keep the alarm by their bedside, as many poisonings occur while stationary or sleeping.
Prices for portable CO alarms online range drastically, but the most important feature to look out for is a UL 2034 certification, which designates the device is in line with national product safety standards.
Campers should avoid using portable gas stoves, gas-powered lanterns, power generators and flameless chemical heaters inside of tents, according to the Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC).
This is especially important when camping in high altitudes, where the risk of carbon monoxide poisoning is increased.
Tents should also be pitched away from idling vehicles and campfire, according to the CPSC.
Initial symptoms of carbon monoxide exposure can easily be mistaken for the flu, jet lag or stomach bugs.
Signs of poisoning, according to Mayo Clinic, include:
- Dull headache
- Weakness
- Dizziness
- Nausea or vomiting
- Shortness of breath
- Confusion
- Blurred vision
- Loss of consciousness
High levels of exposure can cause symptoms such as mental confusion and loss of muscle control to develop more rapidly.
If you or fellow travelers experience any of these symptoms, seek fresh air and medical advice immediately.

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An Uproar at the NIH
An Uproar at the NIH

Yahoo

time24 minutes ago

  • Yahoo

An Uproar at the NIH

The Atlantic Daily, a newsletter that guides you through the biggest stories of the day, helps you discover new ideas, and recommends the best in culture. Sign up for it here. Updated at 10:26 a.m. on June 9, 2025 Since winning President Donald Trump's nomination to serve as the director of the National Institutes of Health, Jay Bhattacharya—a health economist and prominent COVID contrarian who advocated for reopening society in the early months of the pandemic—has pledged himself to a culture of dissent. 'Dissent is the very essence of science,' Bhattacharya said at his confirmation hearing in March. 'I'll foster a culture where NIH leadership will actively encourage different perspectives and create an environment where scientists, including early-career scientists and scientists that disagree with me, can express disagreement, respectfully.' Two months into his tenure at the agency, hundreds of NIH officials are taking Bhattacharya at his word. More than 300 officials, from across all of the NIH's 27 institutes and centers, have signed and sent a letter to Bhattacharya that condemns the changes that have thrown the agency into chaos in recent months—and calls on their director to reverse some of the most damaging shifts. Since January, the agency has been forced by Trump officials to fire thousands of its workers and rescind or withhold funding from thousands of research projects. Tomorrow, Bhattacharya is set to appear before a Senate appropriations subcommittee to discuss a proposed $18 billion slash to the NIH budget—about 40 percent of the agency's current allocation. The letter, titled the Bethesda Declaration (a reference to the NIH's location in Bethesda, Maryland), is modeled after the Great Barrington Declaration, an open letter published by Bhattacharya and two of his colleagues in October 2020 that criticized 'the prevailing COVID-19 policies' and argued that it was safe—even beneficial—for most people to resume life as normal. The approach that the Great Barrington Declaration laid out was, at the time, widely denounced by public-health experts, including the World Health Organization and then–NIH director Francis Collins, as dangerous and scientifically unsound. The allusion in the NIH letter, officials told me, isn't meant glibly: 'We hoped he might see himself in us as we were putting those concerns forward,' Jenna Norton, a program director at the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases, and one of the letter's organizers, told me. None of the NIH officials I spoke with for this story could recall another time in their agency's history when staff have spoken out so publicly against a director. But none of them could recall, either, ever seeing the NIH so aggressively jolted away from its core mission. 'It was time enough for us to speak out,' Sarah Kobrin, a branch chief at the National Cancer Institute, who has signed her name to the letter, told me. To preserve American research, government scientists—typically focused on scrutinizing and funding the projects most likely to advance the public's health—are now instead trying to persuade their agency's director to help them win a political fight with the White House. In an emailed statement, Bhattacharya said, 'The Bethesda Declaration has some fundamental misconceptions about the policy directions the NIH has taken in recent months, including the continuing support of the NIH for international collaboration. Nevertheless, respectful dissent in science is productive. We all want the NIH to succeed.' A spokesperson for HHS also defended the policies the letter critiqued, arguing that the NIH is 'working to remove ideological influence from the scientific process' and 'enhancing the transparency, rigor, and reproducibility of NIH-funded research.' The agency spends most of its nearly $48 billion budget powering science: It is the world's single-largest public funder of biomedical research. But since January, the NIH has canceled thousands of grants—originally awarded on the basis of merit—for political reasons: supporting DEI programming, having ties to universities that the administration has accused of anti-Semitism, sending resources to research initiatives in other countries, advancing scientific fields that Trump officials have deemed wasteful. Prior to 2025, grant cancellations were virtually unheard-of. But one official at the agency, who asked to remain anonymous out of fear of professional repercussions, told me that staff there now spend nearly as much time terminating grants as awarding them. And the few prominent projects that the agency has since been directed to fund appear either to be geared toward confirming the administration's biases on specific health conditions, or to benefit NIH leaders. 'We're just becoming a weapon of the state,' another official, who signed their name anonymously to the letter, told me. 'They're using grants as a lever to punish institutions and academia, and to censor and stifle science.' NIH officials have tried to voice their concerns in other ways. At internal meetings, leaders of the agency's institutes and centers have questioned major grant-making policy shifts. Some prominent officials have resigned. Current and former NIH staffers have been holding weekly vigils in Bethesda, commemorating, in the words of the organizers, 'the lives and knowledge lost through NIH cuts.' (Attendees are encouraged to wear black.) But these efforts have done little to slow the torrent of changes at the agency. Ian Morgan, a postdoctoral fellow at the NIH and one of the letter's signers, told me that the NIH fellows union, which he is part of, has sent Bhattacharya repeated requests to engage in discussion since his first week at the NIH. 'All of those have been ignored,' Morgan said. By formalizing their objections and signing their names to them, officials told me, they hope that Bhattacharya will finally feel compelled to respond. (To add to the public pressure, Jeremy Berg, who led the NIH's National Institute of General Medical Sciences until 2011, is also organizing a public letter of support for the Bethesda Declaration, in partnership with Stand Up for Science, which has organized rallies in support of research.) Scientists elsewhere at HHS, which oversees the NIH, have become unusually public in defying political leadership, too. Last month, after Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.—in a bizarre departure from precedent—announced on social media that he was sidestepping his own agency, the CDC, and purging COVID shots from the childhood-immunization schedule, CDC officials chose to retain the vaccines in their recommendations, under the condition of shared decision making with a health-care provider. Many signers of the Bethesda letter are hopeful that Bhattacharya, 'as a scientist, has some of the same values as us,' Benjamin Feldman, a staff scientist at the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, told me. Perhaps, with his academic credentials and commitment to evidence, he'll be willing to aid in the pushback against the administration's overall attacks on science, and defend the agency's ability to power research. But other officials I spoke with weren't so optimistic. Many at the NIH now feel they work in a 'culture of fear,' Norton said. Since January, NIH officials have told me that they have been screamed at and bullied by HHS personnel pushing for policy changes; some of the NIH leaders who have been most outspoken against leadership have also been forcibly reassigned to irrelevant positions. At one point, Norton said, after she fought for a program focused on researcher diversity, some members of NIH leadership came to her office and cautioned her that they didn't want to see her on the next list of mass firings. (In conversations with me, all of the named officials I spoke with emphasized that they were speaking in their personal capacity, and not for the NIH.) Bhattacharya, who took over only two months ago, hasn't been the Trump appointee driving most of the decisions affecting the NIH—and therefore might not have the power to reverse or overrule them. HHS officials have pressured agency leadership to defy court orders, as I've reported; mass cullings of grants have been overseen by DOGE. And as much as Bhattacharya might welcome dissent, he so far seems unmoved by it. In early May, Berg emailed Bhattacharya to express alarm over the NIH's severe slowdown in grant making, and to remind him of his responsibilities as director to responsibly shepherd the funds Congress had appropriated to the agency. The next morning, according to the exchange shared with me by Berg, Bhattacharya replied saying that, 'contrary to the assertion you make in the letter,' his job was to ensure that the NIH's money would be spent on projects that advance American health, rather than 'on ideological boondoggles and on dangerous research.' And at a recent NIH town hall, Bhattacharya dismissed one staffer's concerns that the Trump administration was purging the identifying variable of gender from scientific research. (Years of evidence back its use.) He echoed, instead, the Trump talking point that 'sex is a very cleanly defined variable,' and argued that gender shouldn't be included as 'a routine question in order to make an ideological point.' The officials I spoke with had few clear plans for what to do if their letter goes unheeded by leadership. Inside the agency, most see few levers left to pull. At the town hall, Bhattacharya also endorsed the highly contentious notion that human research started the pandemic—and noted that NIH-funded science, specifically, might have been to blame. When dozens of staffers stood and left the auditorium in protest, prompting applause that interrupted Bhattacharya, he simply smiled. 'It's nice to have free speech,' he said, before carrying right on. Article originally published at The Atlantic

Average American only gets this much time a month to themselves
Average American only gets this much time a month to themselves

Miami Herald

time32 minutes ago

  • Miami Herald

Average American only gets this much time a month to themselves

The average American would pay $2,521 for a day of peace and quiet - while parents would pay $1,147 more. That's according to a new survey of 2,000 Americans (30% of whom are parents), which explored the importance of quality time to recharge and the barriers to getting enough of it. Results showed the average respondent only gets 9.5 hours per month to themselves with the biggest barriers being family obligations (50%), work commitments (32%) and financial constraints (24%). Social obligations (22%) and guilt for finally getting free time (13%) were also listed as reasons respondents don't get the alone time they crave. A little over half of respondents (53%) said they need more alone time than they're currently getting. And the lengths respondents said they'll go to were surprising. Nearly 38% of respondents admit to lying to a partner, friends or family in order to get some time to themselves. The most common lie shared among participants was "I'm not feeling well" (54%), followed by "I have a lot of work to do" (40%), "I have a headache" (33%), "I have an appointment" (33%) and "My phone's about to die, so I can't talk" (32%). The survey, conducted by Talker Research on behalf of Apple Vacations, pinpointed the dollar amount people attribute to certain elements of relaxation and found the average parent polled values a lazy morning to themselves at $325. It's no wonder then that people would be willing to pay an average of $339.8 for just one extra hour of sleep. And the feeling extends to vacations, with 40% of respondents saying they've booked a trip specifically for peace and quiet. "In a world where silence feels like a luxury, it's clear people aren't just craving quiet," said Dana Studebaker, Vice President of Marketing, Consumer Brands, Apple Vacations. "They're willing to invest in it. Everyone deserves moments that are truly their own." How would respondents spend this precious, uninterrupted time alone? One in six said they'd be happy doing anything as long as it wasn't a chore or obligation. And one in eight said they'd want to binge TV or movies (13%) or spend the day at the beach (12%). Interestingly, two-thirds agreed (66%) that visiting family does not count as a restful vacation. "When people are willing to spend hundreds - or even thousands - just for a little peace and quiet, it says a lot about how rare true rest has become," added Michael Lowery, Head of Global Consumer Brands, Apple Vacations. "Sometimes the most valuable thing you can give yourself is time without expectation." Survey methodology: Talker Research surveyed 2,000 Americans (18+ who traveled in the past 12 months); the survey was commissioned by Apple Vacations and administered and conducted online by Talker Research between April 22 - April 28, 2025. We are sourcing from a non-probability frame and the two main sources we use are: Traditional online access panels - where respondents opt-in to take part in online market research for an incentiveProgrammatic - where respondents are online and are given the option to take part in a survey to receive a virtual incentive usually related to the online activity they are engaging in Those who did not fit the specified sample were terminated from the survey. As the survey is fielded, dynamic online sampling is used, adjusting targeting to achieve the quotas specified as part of the sampling plan. Regardless of which sources a respondent came from, they were directed to an Online Survey, where the survey was conducted in English; a link to the questionnaire can be shared upon request. Respondents were awarded points for completing the survey. These points have a small cash-equivalent monetary value. Cells are only reported on for analysis if they have a minimum of 80 respondents, and statistical significance is calculated at the 95% level. Data is not weighted, but quotas and other parameters are put in place to reach the desired sample. Interviews are excluded from the final analysis if they failed quality-checking measures. This includes: Speeders: Respondents who complete the survey in a time that is quicker than one-third of the median length of interview are disqualified as speedersOpen ends: All verbatim responses (full open-ended questions as well as other please specify options) are checked for inappropriate or irrelevant textBots: Captcha is enabled on surveys, which allows the research team to identify and disqualify botsDuplicates: Survey software has "deduping" based on digital fingerprinting, which ensures nobody is allowed to take the survey more than once It is worth noting that this survey was only available to individuals with internet access, and the results may not be generalizable to those without internet access. The post Average American only gets this much time a month to themselves appeared first on Talker. Copyright Talker News. All Rights Reserved.

I've been to over 90 countries. I'll never travel somewhere new before asking these 8 questions.
I've been to over 90 countries. I'll never travel somewhere new before asking these 8 questions.

Business Insider

time33 minutes ago

  • Business Insider

I've been to over 90 countries. I'll never travel somewhere new before asking these 8 questions.

What are the public toilets like? When I first started traveling, I quickly learned that there is no one right way to use the toilet. Many Americans take the "porcelain throne" for granted, but in some parts of the world, it's common to squat over a hole in the ground. I've also visited countries where it's customary to pay an attendant a nominal amount for a square or two of toilet paper. In some countries' restrooms, you won't find toilet paper at all — but instead, a bidet or bucket of water to wipe yourself clean. To prepare for any and all bathroom situations, I try to bring a roll of toilet paper and plenty of hand sanitizer on every international trip. Can I brush my teeth with tap water? Many Americans, myself included, are used to turning on the tap and having fresh, clean water to drink and brush their teeth. However, this isn't the case everywhere. My travel experiences have taught me that nothing will ruin a trip faster than gastrointestinal distress from unsafe drinking water. Now, before I travel, I always check the US Department of State website to see if I'll need to stick to bottled water. If the country's tap water isn't safe to drink, I'll attach my toothbrush to a bottle with a rubber band. This helps me remember not to rinse my toothbrush under the tap — a mistake that's easy to make in the early morning. Do I need to apply for a visa ahead of time? If you have an American passport (like I do), you can visit some countries worldwide without being granted permission. However, there are many exceptions. Countries like India, Cambodia, and China require Americans to apply for a visa before visiting; and as of this year, Americans and Canadians need an Electronic Travel Authorization to enter the UK. To visit some countries, you'll have to go to a consulate and apply in person. For others, you can apply virtually. If you don't have the right type of visa, you might not be allowed to board your plane — or you might even be turned away at the border. As a frequent traveler, I always check whether I need a visa to travel as soon as I book a trip. Most countries' embassies will have this information on their websites. How can I get cell service without paying a fortune? When I'm traveling, I'm always terrified of being left without cellular service — but I also want to avoid pricy roaming fees and daily charges. To save money, I usually use a service like Airalo or Holafly to purchase an eSIM card when I travel out of the country. That way, I can access a local carrier and control costs. This method has worked for me all around the world. With an eSIM, I can still access my primary number's voicemail and text messages as long as I'm connected to WiFi. How will I charge my devices? Speaking of phones, you'll want to make sure you can actually charge your devices. Outlets are different all around the world, and I've learned the hard way that even adapters labeled as "universal" usually aren't. A quick online search will tell you which kind of adapter you need to stay powered up. Preparing ahead is important here — although airports usually sell adapters, they tend to be more expensive than ones you can order online. Do I need to get any vaccines, or prepare for any potential illnesses? I am up-to-date on all of the standard vaccines in the United States. However, several diseases that are largely under control in the US pose a significant threat abroad. My years of travel have taught me to always check and see if I need any additional vaccines before a trip. In preparation for trips abroad, I've taken live typhoid pills and been vaccinated against yellow fever. For other trips, I've taken pills to prevent malaria. At my doctor's recommendation, I've even packed antibiotics to bring to countries where they might not be readily available. Visit the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's website to see which vaccines and medications are recommended for your destination. Once you know what you need, your local pharmacy may be able to order the recommended vaccines for you, or your primary care physician might be able to call in a prescription. Will my credit cards work? Many Americans are used to paying for just about anything they need with the swipe of a card — or even a phone if they use Apple Pay. However, some countries are still largely cash-based societies. If that's the case where you are traveling, always come prepared with an ATM card — and make sure your bank account has enough cash. Finally, keep your budget in mind. If you don't have a credit card specifically designed for travel, remember you may be hit with expensive foreign transaction fees for every purchase. Are there any unusual laws I need to know about? Through my travels, I've come across a lot of unexpected laws. For example, some countries in the Caribbean ban civilians from wearing camouflage. In France, you're not allowed to buy or even wear counterfeit clothing, including purses. Moreover, some countries have restrictions on the type of medications you can bring in, even if they were legally prescribed in your home country. It's important to me to respect local customs and stay on the right side of the law — so I always do a quick online search to see if there are any rules I need to know about before I travel.

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