Coronation Street star Jennie McAlpine who plays Fiz in the popular television soap said that the storyline about her suffering carbon monoxide poisoning could save viewers’ lives.

There are millions of fans who watch Coronation Street regularly and they saw Fiz suffer from carbon monoxide poisoning caused by a faulty central heating boiler after her co-star character, Tyrone, illegally tries to fix her boiler.  It is illegal to work on gas appliances if you are not on the Gas Safe Register and carbon monoxide (CO) is known as the silent killer because we can’t see it, taste it or smell it.  Carbon monoxide is produced when gas appliances are not working properly due to incorrect or poor maintenance and around 50 people died from carbon monoxide poisoning in 2012.

In spite of the potential danger of carbon monoxide, almost half of the public do not get their gas central heating boilers regularly checked and maintained and in the current economic climate this is probably not going to change.  However, there may be help with the Government’s recently launched ECO Affordable Warmth Obligation which runs alongside the Green Deal.

The ECO Affordable Warmth Scheme provides funding from energy suppliers to replace old, inefficient and faulty central heating boilers with a new energy efficient boiler.  Naturally there are conditions attached but if you live in your own home (or a privately rented home), receive certain state benefits (including Pension Credit, Child Tax Credit, Income-Related benefits and Working Tax Credit) and you have an inefficient, faulty boiler you may qualify for a free boiler with Affordable Warmth.