Dozens of carbon monoxide alarms sold over Amazon and eBay have been withdrawn from sale after failing safety tests.
Four alarms available for sale on the retail websites failed to detect the presence of the gas, making them potentially lethal in the event of a carbon monoxide build-up in a home, an investigation by Which? found.
The consumer group urged anyone who purchased one of the devices – which all claimed to meet British safety standards – to replace them.
One of the alarms, the Topolek GEHS007AW CO, failed to detect the gas in more than 80 per cent of the tests conducted by the watchdog. It was bestseller on Amazon, where it retailed at £14.99.
Three other unbranded alarms, made in China and sold through Amazon and eBay for less than £10, also repeatedly failed to sound when there was carbon monoxide in the air.
[...] Amazon and eBay have removed the alarms from sale and also “de-listed” another 50 lookalike alarms believed to be identical to the three unbranded alarms.
Which? advised anyone who owns one of the alarms to replace it immediately and to contact the company they bought it from for a full refund.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 25 2018, @03:43PM (7 children)
Does that include ebay? Most of the stuff I buy there costs under $1 (£1)? I can't imagine anyone paying for any sort of certification test.
(Score: 2) by janrinok on Monday June 25 2018, @05:25PM
Legally, if it is imported into the UK it should be subjected to the relevant safety checks. As I acknowledged in my previous post, buying on EBay might mean that the purchaser is also the importer. I'm not sure how such things are managed in the UK at the moment with this sort of thing. It might be more a case of caveat emptor.
The cost is not an issue. Goods for sale in the UK (and Europe) should meet the appropriate safety specifications - where such specifications exist - and be fit for purpose,
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 25 2018, @05:34PM (5 children)
If the product has anything to do with safety then you should make sure it is independently tested. If it's so cheap that the manufacturer cannot afford any kind of type approval then the product is likely to be dangerous.
Even if it's not actually illegal to buy, I do not recommend saving $5 by getting a product that is fail-deadly.
(Score: 2) by suburbanitemediocrity on Monday June 25 2018, @06:16PM (1 child)
I'll take my chances
https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Stainless-Steel-Metal-Ruler-20cm-8-Inch-Metric-Imperial-Scale-Measuring/263716842092?epid=3017531093&hash=item3d66bfaa6c:g:ibkAAOSwHf5bCk1S [ebay.co.uk]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 25 2018, @06:27PM
How is a measurement ruler relevant to the topic at hand? That's obviously not going to fail deadly.
We are talking about safety products, such as carbon monoxide detectors...
(Score: 2) by bob_super on Monday June 25 2018, @06:22PM (2 children)
I was going to complain that you're trying to ruin my plot to kill my in-laws, but given how rarely the potential CO source runs in the house (at most 3 weeks a year), that was a pretty shitty plan to start with.
Coincidentally, it looks like the manufacturer of my CO detector decided to put in a timer to disable it after about 5 years. That happened two nights ago. Batteries and everything else seem fine, but it beeps continuously.
Related : Can anyone explain to me why smoke alarms and similar detectors always seem to start beeping for battery/lifespan fail between 3 and 5AM ?
(Score: 2, Informative) by khallow on Monday June 25 2018, @06:52PM
Coolest time of the day? Battery life is temperature dependent. The place where I work in the winter has plenty of poorly insulated cabins, each with a smoke detector. In winter when we get the first real cold wave, all those smoke detectors start beeping at once, usually overnight. There's nothing so sad as the beeping of a dozen, dying smoke detectors.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 25 2018, @06:57PM
All detectors in current use have a limited shelf life. For example, the common electrochemical type is basically an electrochemical cell with a platinum electrode. Platinum is a catalyst for the oxidation reaction of CO + H₂O => CO₂ + 2H⁺ + 2e. By applying a known bias voltage we get an electric current from the resulting ions which can then be measured by the instrument to determine the amount of CO reacting with the detector.
Like all electrochemcal cells, the electrodes and the electrolyte degrade over time, increasing the ionic resistance until eventually the instrument will fail to meet its required accuracy specifications. It should be replaced before that happens, which is why all such instruments have a replace-by date (often this is date is printed directly on the instrument).