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Salt Lake firefighters will soon be using a new antidote for cyanide poisoning. It comes in a kit and can be administered to the victim on location, within minutes after they're pulled from a fire.
Are victims of fire intoxicated by cyanide long before they're overcome by the smoke and carbon monoxide, or burned by the fire itself? Too many victims are now found some distance from a fire, when they actually should have smelled the smoke and escaped.
Dr. Steven Joyce, the medical director for the Salt Lake City Fire Dept., said, "And we theorize that when they inhaled the smoke and were exposed to cyanide, that the cyanide so quickly incapacitates people, and we know that from research, that the person was unable to get up and run away."
The bigger problem in a fire, in many cases more so than the smoke itself, are all our new-generation plastics and synthetic materials that give off cyanide during combustion. In fact, cyanide sometimes lingers even later, as firefighters in Rhode Island found out when they were cleaning up. "After the fire had been extinguished, when cyanide was still being given off by smoldering remains, several of them were seriously affected. One had a cardiac arrest but was resuscitated," Dr. Joyce said.
In the Manchester aircraft fire, 87 percent of the victims had lethal doses of cyanide, compared to only 21 percent with carbon monoxide. Cyanide almost equaled carbon monoxide in the Happy Land Social Club Fire. Cyanide again was far more potentially lethal in the Dupont Plaza Hotel Fire.
The increasing threat is why Salt Lake City firefighters and paramedics will soon be using this new cyanide antidote. Unlike old compounds that decrease the body's ability to deliver oxygen to tissues, this new IV drip works under a whole new natural chemical reaction.
"It's actually a precursor of vitamin B12 in very large doses. When it combines with cyanide it becomes vitamin B12 in very large doses, and then that is harmlessly eliminated from the body," Joyce explained.
The antidote works within 15 minutes. Salt Lake City and County firefighters and paramedics will begin training with the new antidote kits within the next two weeks.
E-mail: eyeates@ksl.com
