Give Me Videogames OrAnd Give Me Death: Hurricane Poisonings Due To Generator Powered Videogames
I've never lived in a place where I've ever needed to own a portable generator. Sure, there was the occasional power outage due to snow or what have you, but I've never thought I couldn't live a day or two without electricity. This includes video games. Shameful, I know.
Well, turns out not everyone can sit on their hands and just quietly wait out a natural disaster. Turns out more than a handful of people thought the solution to this problem is to run a generator to power their TV gaming, using a generator indoors:
Of 12 separate poisoning incidents in the Houston area in the wake of Hurricane Ike, which left two million people without power in September 2008, five resulted from the use of generators for video games, Caroline Fife, M.D., of the University of Texas Health Science Center in Houston, and colleagues reported.Overall, 21 children and 17 adults were poisoned. A three-year-old died, and the others had symptoms ranging from nausea, vomiting, dizziness, and headache to chest pain, loss of consciousness, and coma, the researchers reported in the June issue of Pediatrics.
"This is the first study to suggest that generators are commonly used immediately after a large-scale power outage to power entertainment electronics for children," they said.
Awesome. Nothing like a healthy dose of carbon monoxide poisoning to teach you read the warning labels on large, mechanical instruments.
Fatal Attraction: Home Generators Used to Power Video Games [GamePolitics]
Asterick
Posted to Video Games on 27 May 2009
· Comments (2)
Other stuff like this: carbon monoxide won't stop my gaming, natural disaster, power outage
I grew up in Oklahoma and often tornadoes would leave us without power for days at a time. I was always pretty pissed when that happened and I secretly hoped my parents would buy a generator so I could play video games after bad storms.
Also, many people get CO poisoning from running their generators in their garages as well. You would think people wouldn't want them in their houses because they are usually really loud and smelly, but they often get stolen when they are in high demand.
A three-year-old died and you're making jokes?