Powell deaths spur U.S. warnings

When a team of medical sleuths reported three years ago that houseboaters on giant Lake Powell in Utah and Arizona were dying of carbon monoxide poisoning disguised as drowning, no one believed them. Independent testing proved they were right, and the boats were recalled and redesigned.

Two years ago, the team determined that people at Lake Powell were dying from carbon monoxide around smaller and faster boats, too — children falling unconscious off the swim platform and drowning, teenage bodies sinking as they tried to hang on to the back of the craft.

Their findings were good news, in a way: It meant that many boating deaths around the country might be preventable.

The Coast Guard began alerting the boating public last month that up to 15 percent of boat-related drownings could involve carbon monoxide.

Those same medical investigators have now studied every boat accident on the lake over the past nine years. Their conclusion: More than 40 percent of the drowning victims were suffocating from carbon monoxide even before they went under.

"It's a frightening number of poisonings that got totally lost," said

Jane McCammon, director of the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health's Western field office.

Nationwide, about 750 people die every year in boating accidents, and most of them drown.

Could more than a third of the deaths be due to a colorless, odorless gas whose dangers have been known for centuries?

"I can't imagine that it would be that high" nationwide, said Dr. Robert Baron, medical director for Lake Powell's Glen Canyon National Recreation Area, who first raised the alarm. "On the other hand, I want to have somebody prove to me why it's not."

That is difficult to do.

Boating accidents and injuries are known to be vastly underreported. Carbon monoxide's involvement rarely makes it into official statistics, even when the facts are obvious and authorities have confirmed the link.

In the wee hours of Sept. 23, 2001, Ralph Reyes started the engine of his 29-foot Sun Runner Ultra to generate power. He and his guests fell asleep in separate cabins on the boat, still moored at Clark's Landing off the Delaware River in Delran, N.J. Reyes and another person died.