Investigators find carbon monoxide leaks in public housing

Inspectors discovered that about 40% of apartments at a North Carolina public housing community where residents have been hospitalized and two babies have died had appliances that were emitting carbon monoxide, a housing authority official confirmed.

Durham officials inspected 70 occupied apartments at McDougald Terrace and identified furnaces, hot water heaters and stoves that were emitting carbon monoxide and needed to be replaced in 28 of those units, the authority's chief executive officer Anthony Scott said during a news conference Wednesday.

Carbon monoxide is a colourless, odourless and potentially poisonous gas that can cause illness and in cases of prolonged exposure, death, the Mayo Clinic.McDougald Terrace was built in the 1950s and is Durham’s largest public housing community, the newspaper said. It has failed multiple federal inspections, according to the Department of Housing and Urban Development. Scott said the low inspections scores show the housing authority's properties "are in bad shape."

He added that decades of underfunding have contributed to the situation. The housing authority said it has reached out to local, state and federal partners for help in replacing the appliances, but does not yet have an estimate on how much the repairs will cost or how long they will take.

Photo by Guy Bowden for Unsplash.