Combustion: The Correlation Between Carbon Dioxide And Fire

Introduction New York City during the Jazz Age was a brewing ground for chemicals of all sorts, from wood alcohol to carbon monoxide to chloroform to so many others. New York City poisonings were once taken lightly and brushed off as mere accidents or even as unimportant, but no more when Alexander Gettler took on the role of forensic chemist under Charles Norris. Gettler received his master’s degree at Columbia University in 1910, and then took a job as chemistry instructor at Bellevue Medical School. He received his Ph.D. two years later, once again from Columbia, and was then promoted to an assistant professor position at the medical school. He was later hired as a forensic chemist for the city of New York, and he took the position to its …show more content…
In fuel-requiring devices when the fool does not burn completely away, it is called incomplete combustion. This makes less oxygen available, creating a situation in which each carbon atom bonds with one singular atom of oxygen- this connection then multiplies millions of times. Carbon monoxide is rarely found in nature, because it is formed during grass and forest fires, in the wake of strikes of lightning, and during any event in which carbon-rich fuel is burned. Once CO is in the atmosphere, it attaches to free oxygen. It then converts to carbon dioxide and disperses into the atmosphere. Despite the fact that it is rarely found in nature, a 1923 toxicology text made it clear that carbon monoxide is always present “to a more or less extent wherever man lives or works.” This gas was synthesized first in 1776 by a French chemist who heated zinc oxide with a concentrated form of coal. It ignited with a blue-violet flame, a color that scientist would later discover was signature of burning carbon monoxide. Carbon monoxide poisoning was made too common by drifting out of brick, lime, and charcoal kilns, burning buildings, stoves, coal-stoked furnaces, gas lighting, gas-water heaters, train smokestacks, and, most notably, automobile tailpipes. The exhaust from automobiles contained up to 25 percent carbon monoxide. One who had been exposed to carbon monoxide might first experience a headache, dizziness, and nausea. As the carbon monoxide built up in the blood, those symptoms get worse, and then seizures, confusion, drowsiness, fast heart rate, fast breathing, chest pains, and vision problems may occur. Carbon monoxide “suffocates its victims simply by muscling oxygen out of the way” (Blum,