Carbon Monoxide Task Group
	CO continues to poison many thousands of individuals in domestic environments, resulting in many needless deaths each year. Common causes of CO poisoning come from poor installation and service of appliances or flues.
	CoGDEM members help reduce CO incidents by offering CO detectors for consumers, CO testing equipment for service engineers and the medical profession and test gases to verify product accuracy.
CoGDEM activities to help consumers
	For consumers, CoGDEM helped create Europe’s first standard for CO detectors (BS 7860, published in 1996) and is pushing for their mandatory installation in Houses of Multiple Occupation (HMO) and local authority housing organisations. A European standard has been published BS EN50291. This work gives consumers confidence in CO detector performance and reliability.
	CoGDEM also supports the UK’s CO awareness and victim support charities. We sponsored CO-GAS’s* February 1999 presentation at the House of Commons, London, of its private members bill, sponsored by Fraser Kemp, a prominent Labour backbencher. This is an important start in getting parliamentary attention and has prompted a review of policy by the Minister responsible for the Health and Safety Executive and Commission (HSE & HSC).
CoGDEM activities to help service engineers
	CoGDEM helped create Europe’s first portable flue gas analyser standard (BS 7927, published in 1998) and is helping in creating a European version, publication due in 2005. It is now working on a code of practice which has the full support of the UK’s gas appliance service engineer licensing authority (CORGI) and the Society for British Gas Industries (SBGI). This work will result in the mandatory use of flue gas analysers by engineers, dramatically reducing poor appliance installation and service work.
	*CO-Gas Safety is an independent registered charity committed to reducing accidents from Carbon Monoxide and other gas dangers and supporting gas related accident victims. Website  www.co-gassafety.co.uk