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Cheryl Burt had the choice of buying a carbon monoxide (CO) alarm or the toy truck her son Zachary had wanted for his birthday. Nearly 10 years later, she still has the truck, but she lost her son — and his brother Nicholas — to CO poisoning.

"I should be raising a large family right now," said Burt, a Minnesota mother who lives with her surviving son Ryan. "Every day I have to live with my decision. I have to live with the fact that the loss of their lives was preventable by something as simple as a carbon monoxide alarm."

Underwriters Laboratories Inc. (UL), the not-for-profit product safety testing and certification organization, is urging homeowners to purchase CO alarms and replace the batteries in existing CO alarms.

Known as the silent killer, CO is an odorless, colorless gas produced by incomplete burning of fuel, such as propane, kerosene, gasoline, oil, natural gas, wood and charcoal. Sources of CO in homes can include malfunctioning gas-fired appliances, space heaters and chimney flues. Each year, more than 500 people die from accidental carbon monoxide poisoning, most of them (64 percent) inside homes, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

"We had been sick but we didn't know why," Burt recalled. "I was continually bringing my children to the doctor. They would wake up in the morning lethargic and ill, but after a 20-minute drive to the doctor's office they would be running around and playing. No one caught on that it was carbon monoxide from a faulty furnace. A CO alarm would have warned us long before our lives were in danger."

Symptoms of CO poisoning include nausea, fatigue, headaches, dizziness, breathing difficulty and confusion — but they are general enough to be confused with the flu, according to Dr. Jerrold Leikin, director of Medical Toxicology for Evanston Northwestern Healthcare in Illinois. CO alarms are designed to alert residents before carbon monoxide concentrations grow to toxic levels, often giving homeowners hours of advance notice.

"A CO alarm should not be confused with a smoke alarm," said John Drengenberg, Consumer Affairs Manager for UL. "A smoke alarm tells you to get out immediately. A CO alarm warns of a potential poisoning risk, usually long before symptoms are apparent, which allows you time to get help. You need both life safety devices in your home."

Most importantly, if a carbon monoxide alarm is activated, immediately open windows and doors for ventilation and then call a qualified technician to identify the source.

If you are a journalist, please click here to download a broadcast quality MPEG2 carbon monoxide safety segment directly to your computer. To download MPEG2 files you will need a hardware MPEG2 decoder or other way of transcoding the MPEG2 file. If you have questions about the MPEG2 file or problems with the download, please call Joe Hirschmugl (847.664.1508) or Amy McEvoy (630.955.6622).