The articles you linked are older (24th & 25th) than the article from the headline ( January 27, 2017 2:15 PM ).

Further investigation and toxicology reports revealed carbon monoxide (fixed) poisoning. It appears the initial statements ruling out carbon monoxide poisoning were in error.

CO or CO2? Both are possible, CO2 poisoning is quite horrible though, whereas CO poisoning may go unnoticed.

CO2 poisoning is insidious, and can go unrecognised, due to its cognitive effects. It's a known risk in using rebreathers when scuba diving.

The UK HSE has published a video of a real-life incident where someone experiences CO2 toxicity from a rebreather (the victim survived and recovered) [1].

[1] http://www.hse.gov.uk/diving/video/co2video.htm

Yeah really -- I can't imagine you could die of CO2 poisoning without noticing in time to GTFO. I've sucked a lungful of CO2 and it was awful.

There is a difference between high and low concentrations of CO2 and reactions. In high concentrations you get similar effect to lack of oxygen (as it completely replaces oxygen in the air), in low concentrations it prevents the HbCO2 from unbinding (only 7% of CO2 in air is enough to do that IIRC) and causes silent death. There are stories of miners sitting down for a lunch and never standing up again because of that.

Carbon monoxide is "CO". CO2 is carbon _di_oxide.

Would a laser cutter cause CO2 poisoning?

Very tragic.

All the signs were CO poisoning from the start. I think first responders said the body discoloration looked like that. The "ruled out" is probably just a mangling of: water heater, oven, and furnace all ruled out as CO sources.

> White also responded to media inquiries about a neighbor’s report of the sound of a generator and an odor of burning rubber coming from the couple’s fourplex in the 3000 block of Deakin Street.

Sounds like they were likely running a laser cutter and the "generator" sound was actually an air compressor. (These are used to blow the smoke out of the way of the beam so that you get a cleaner, more accurate cut.)

Chlorine gas is a major risk with a lot of materials, but presumably there could by other kinds of nasty fumes depending on what they were cutting.

edit: others are saying that it was in fact CO, so I'll go with that. I'd still like to know what they were cutting, though.

> White said the police department received a noise complaint on Sept. 22, 2015, and when a police officer later contacted the complainant about the issue, the generator was no longer running.

2015. If that is about the same incident it's quite a while before the current event (unless it's a typo in the article).