Carbon Monoxide Safety Checks

Free tools to evaluate your CO safety - at home, while traveling, and season by season.

Carbon monoxide is a leading cause of accidental poisoning death in the United States. Every year, it kills more than 400 people, sends over 100,000 to the emergency room, and hospitalizes thousands more - often because a simple safety step was missed.

These free safety checks help you find the gaps before CO does. Each one takes 1-3 minutes, asks focused questions about your specific situation, and gives you a clear result with prioritized actions. They are based on guidelines from the CDC, CPSC, NFPA, EPA, and other authoritative sources.

Pick the check that matches your situation right now, or work through several for a comprehensive CO safety picture.

Every check on this page covers a place the law reaches. That is not a coincidence and it is worth saying out loud, because the gap is where people are hurt without a rule behind them. Reading all 51 US jurisdiction records: 39 affirmatively record that the carbon monoxide requirement does not reach a workplace, 11 reach one only on a condition, and 1 is not established. The eleven get there through occupancy rather than through a workplace rule at all, which is why they read so oddly: Arizona names a repair shop that runs vehicles indoors, and Georgia reaches assembly space because NFPA 101 is organised by occupancy instead of by a list of building types. Schools sit in the same shape. Only Connecticut and Rhode Island reach them outright, 44 answer conditionally, 4 record that they do not, and Texas is open. So if you spend the day somewhere the checks below do not fit, the honest answer is that your state most likely has no rule for it, and the alarm is yours to arrange.

How to Choose a Check

Start with your most immediate concern. If your CO alarm is beeping right now, start with the CO Alarm Beeping Check. If you are traveling soon, take the Travel CO Safety Check.

For a broad home audit, we recommend: Home CO Safety Readiness Check → Detector Placement → Seasonal Check → Generator Safety. Renters should start with the Rental Compliance Check.

Recommended Paths

Not sure where to start? Pick the path that matches your situation.

Check Your Requirements by Property Type

CO detector requirements depend on where you live and what kind of property it is. These guides break down the rules by situation.

• CO detector laws by state, overview of requirements for homes, rentals, and hotels
• Rental CO detector requirements, landlord and tenant obligations by state
• Hotel and Airbnb CO safety, traveler checklists and state-level hotel rules

Sources & References

1. CDC - CO Poisoning Basics . More than 400 unintentional deaths a year, more than 100,000 emergency department visits and more than 14,000 hospitalizations.
2. CPSC - CO Information Center . "More than 200 people in the United States die every year from accidental non-fire related CO poisoning associated with consumer products. More than 100 of those deaths are linked to portable generators." Also the 20-foot generator rule and the recall notices.
3. NFPA - Carbon Monoxide Safety . NFPA's consumer guidance: alarms "in a central location outside each sleeping area and on every level of the home", interconnected, mounted at the height the manufacturer specifies. NFPA 72 itself is sold, not published here.
4. EPA - Protect Your Family from CO . EPA's DO and DON'T factsheet and its ventilation guidance. It carries no placement rule, and its detector section still calls the technology "still developing" and less reliable than smoke alarms, which CPSC no longer says.
5. USFA/FEMA - CO Poisoning Prevention . "More than 150 people in the United States die every year from accidental nonfire-related CO", which USFA attributes to CPSC, plus free messaging materials.
6. American Red Cross - CO Preparedness Checklist . The household CO checklist, downloadable in English and Spanish, and the clearest statement of the alarm sounds: "Smoke alarms typically make three fast beeps ... A carbon monoxide alarm makes four fast beeps."
7. National Safety Council - Carbon Monoxide . Seasonal tips and NSC's own replacement advice, battery at each clock change and a new detector every five years. Its CDC figures are older ones, "more than 20,000" emergency room visits against the more than 100,000 CDC publishes now.
8. Safe Kids Worldwide - Carbon Monoxide . Child-specific prevention guidance. Treat its headline figure with care: it says "over 150 kids die" a year from CO, which does not reconcile with CDC's own age breakdown, where death rates are lowest under 25 and the all-ages average is 430 a year. We cite it for the guidance, not the number.