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ltbrown
New Contributor

Which of these chemicals produces CO?

I was doing an inspection the other day, testing CO and smoke alarms in

a home. The homeowner explained to me that her CO detector goes off when

she uses her hairspray. Now, initially I thought she was mistakenly

hearing her ionization smoke detector, but low and behold it was her

hairspray setting off the CO detector. She has a Knight Hawk brand that

reads the levels. I have a list of aerosol gases in her product which

could produce CO, but I don't know which ones. Can someone look at the

list and let me know which produce CO? If you can't, I understand.

These are in the order they appear on the can:

Hydrofluorocarbon 152a,

Octylacrylamide

Acrylates

Butylaminoethyl,

Methacrylate Copolymer,

Aminomethyl propanol,

AMP- isostearoyl

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1 Reply
BryanBalazs
Contributor II

Re: Which of these chemicals produces CO?

Depending on which type of CO detector this person has (metal oxide detectors can have an issue with hair spray propellants), it's quite likely that there is an issue with "cross sensitivity", i.e., the detector is responding to certain chemicals even when CO is not present.  A quick Internet search on "carbon monoxide detector hair spray" comes up with a number of recommendations to not place the CO detector near where hair spray might be used (or other sprays, such as deoderant spray).  I'd suggest just moving the CO alarm further away from where such sprays are likely to be used.

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