Carbon Dioxide dangerous?

hey, so I've been having these real bad headaches the last few days, and I never really thought much of them, just took some ibruprofen and moved on. I have a 5 gallon carboy fermenting vigorously right by my desk, and I told my friend this, and he thought that it might be from the carbon dioxide the carboy is releasing is the cause of my headaches. My apartment bedroom is pretty small, maybe 10x10. I dont think this is the case, but I figured I should check. Thanks

Crack a window and let in some fresh air......place a potted plant near the desk. I really doubt its giving off THAT much co2 but if the headaches stop after you've cracked the window it may be the case.

yeah, perhaps you should just stop breathing, that should cut down on the carbon dioxide in your room by a significant amount..

could be something else, but i doubt its the CO2

There's a surprising amount of CO2 given off by a batch of fermenting beer. Each pound of fermentable sugar converts into roughly a 1/2lb of ethyl alcohol and 1/2lb of CO2.

GNBrews said:

There's a surprising amount of CO2 given off by a batch of fermenting beer. Each pound of fermentable sugar converts into roughly a 1/2lb of ethyl alcohol and 1/2lb of CO2.

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but on average a person exhales 2.3lb co2 per day

so obviously, save the beer and stop breathing, or open a window or something

Mista_Sparkle said:

but on average a person exhales 2.3lb co2 per day

so obviously, save the beer and stop breathing, or open a window or something

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Yeah im not going to worry about it, I was just wondering if that was maybe a cause. I cant open my window right now as its -5F out. I have my bedroom closed off from the rest of the house so I dont have to heat everything else, so Ill just air out my room for awhile before I go to bed.

I thought CO2 was kinda heavy, so unless you spend lots of time on the floor it probably isn't the CO2 (this is one of the reasons that CO2 poisoning can really ruin your day, b/c if there's enough to knock you out, then you will likely end up on the floor where the CO2 is heavily concentrated). Could it be any of the other tons of fermentation byproducts? How does your place smell?

I am among those who doubts that CO2 from your fermenting beer could be involved in your headaches. Nevertheless, if you're in a shut-up house in the winter, and getting headaches, you need to investigate the cause right away. There are other, and more sinister things that could be causing the headaches, the worst of which would be CO (carbon monoxide) as a combustion byproduct.
A house that has been tightly weatherstripped and caulked, so that there is little infiltration of outside air is more likely to allow the buildup of such things. I would think that the first step I would take is to purchase or borrow a CO monitor and test the air in your house. This is the first step because that stuff can kill you, and in low concentrations.
Then I would look to ensure that the house had adequate ventilation, the first step being that there is no appliance that is systematically consuming the oxygen in the house, like a furnace. With modern appliances, the flue/vent should be designed so that it draws its combustion air directly from the outside. What I would look at first is the presence of any fireplaces, stoves, or supplementary heaters that do NOT draw their air from the outside. In a well-sealed house, these can be deadly.

(Note: my uncle was a mechanical engineer who testified in numerous court cases, some of which involved this particular situation, and he never tired of reminding us when we'd move that we always needed to check this out.)

Although I am sure your breathing gives off more, maybe between the two of you (beer and yourself) you are producing enough to lower the available O2. So it isn't really the CO2 causing the headaches but the lack of O2. I don't know but maybe?

Create one of those co2 converting boxes like they made in Apollo 13. Shouldnt be too hard...all they had to work with was a cardboard box, duct tape, and some other McGuyver-esq materials.

I was on submarines for 3 1/2 years and I could tell the CO2 levels based on the intensity of my headaches. It only took 0.5% to get them started. In a room your size, it would be very easy to hit that level. Normal levels are around 0.04%. Lethal level is 10%.

I'm in the plausible camp. Breathing ok, fermenting ok, both may be borderline. If you don't have forced air heat to exchange room air, it can build up. To get an idea of how much CO2 is produced at peak fermentation, rubberband a garbage bag over the airlock.

I am going on the plausible bus. Maybe you are more sensitive to CO2 concentrations than others. Seems slim but hey even a bee sting can kill some people.

OK, thanks guys. So last night before I went to sleep, I aired out the room, opened the windows, and just sacrificed my room to the cold to air it out. Then I closed it back up and put the heater on, and went to sleep, and for the first time in 2 days I've woken up without a headache. I still am jumping on the plausible train as well, because I think that its likely it could have been something else (stress, work, etc.), but its always possible.

I go with Co2 may be plausible, but have you considered humidity? As we move into the heating season, it gets damn dry in the house. My sinuses tend to dry out and cause headaches.

skyzo said:

hey, so I've been having these real bad headaches the last few days, and I never really thought much of them, just took some ibruprofen and moved on. I have a 5 gallon carboy fermenting vigorously right by my desk, and I told my friend this, and he thought that it might be from the carbon dioxide the carboy is releasing is the cause of my headaches. My apartment bedroom is pretty small, maybe 10x10. I dont think this is the case, but I figured I should check. Thanks

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Hey Skyzo

What caused your headache? Did you figure it out in the end?

Co2 can be about as dangerous as CO. We had co2 extinguisher systems on sections of the plants at Ford. And I mean maybe 10-12 big long cylinders stood on end & strapped together. when that thing goes off,you had 10 seconds or less to be somewhere else. Like right now. At the least you get headaches,at the most you die,& very quickly. The fermenter should be in a better ventilated room.

Maybe the headaches are from too many homebrews from the night before?

This interested me enough to do a quick back of napkin calc on the o2 levels in the room. assuming that 1 kg of "sugar" converts to 0.5 kg of CO2 and that the room is sealed. I got that the o2 level in the 10'x10' room would drop to just over 17.5%. Realistically the room would have a slight ventalation but as mentioned before this was likely enough for normal breathing but not for the added amount of co2 from fermentation.
Found this interesting list of o2 levels:
http://www.newton.dep.anl.gov/askasci/zoo00/zoo00755.htm

Can you put the carboy somewhere else in the appartment?