Gas Safe Register advises festival-goers on staying gas safe this summer

Gas Safe Register has created a new Spotify and Apple Music playlist to remind music festival campers - including Leeds and Reading Festivals - to have a #GasSafeSummer

With Britain's summer music festival season in full swing - including Leeds and Reading Festivals later this month - Gas Safe Register has created a new Spotify and Apple Music playlist.

This musical medley includes songs from Coldplay, Oasis and The Beatles to help warn people of the risk of carbon monoxide (CO) poisoning from unsafe barbecuing.

Gas Safe Summer Playlist

Regina Spektor – Carbon Monoxide

Gas Safe Register advises festival-goers and other campers on staying gas safe this summer #GasSafeSummer

Coldplay – Warning sign

Alice Cooper – Poison

Arctic Monkeys – D is for Dangerous

Oasis – Gas Panic

Beck – Nausea

T. Rex – Life’s a Gas

Louis Armstrong & His Hot Five – Struttin’ with Some Barbecue

The Beatles – Dizzy Miss Lizzy

Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds – Breathless

With half of us planning around five barbecues this summer, most of us don’t recognise that CO poisoning, known as the ‘silent killer’ could be a potential danger. The tell-tale signs and symptoms of CO poisoning are headaches, nausea, breathlessness, dizziness, collapse and loss of consciousness.

Millennials (18 to 35-year-olds) are twice as likely than the rest of the population to bring barbecues into enclosed spaces, such as tents or caravans, after cooking. Taking a barbecue inside a tent, caravan or any enclosed space, even when cooling down after cooking, can lead to unsafe levels of CO being released. This is because a barbecue in a confined area does not have enough ventilation to burn properly.

We’ll be speaking to festival goers and Gas Safe Register in a Facebook Live session later this month to discuss the dangers of CO poisoning when barbecuing ahead of Leeds Festival.

Recent research has revealed that the majority (86%) of people in Yorkshire and Humber do not identify CO poisoning as a potential danger when barbecuing, instead selecting food poisoning (69%), burns (49%), child safety (45%), drunken accidents (32%) and garden fires (30%) as the main barbecue hazards.

Gas Safe Register’s barbecue safety advice is:

Don’t take a smouldering or lit barbecue into a tent, caravan or cabin. Even if you’ve finished cooking, your barbecue can still give off fumes, so keep it outside

Always ensure you can see your lit barbecue and don’t leave it lit whilst sleeping

Use your barbecue in accordance with the operating instructions

Jonathan Samuel, chief executive of Gas Safe Register, said: “As festival season gathers pace, stay safe and keep barbecues outside so they’re well ventilated. Carbon monoxide can be mistaken for other illnesses so it’s importance to know the symptoms; headaches, dizziness, nausea, breathlessness and collapse or lack of consciousness.”

Gas Safe Register is the registration body appointed by the Health and Safety Executive to manage the gas safety register in the UK, Isle of Man and Guernsey. To legally work on gas appliances, engineers must have the appropriate qualifications and be listed on the Gas Safe Register.

Find out more at www.GasSafeRegister.co.uk or search #GasSafeSummer for gas safety tips on social media.