Carbon monoxide poisoning can happen within a matter of minutes. It's responsible for more deaths than any other single poison.

Philip Heubeck says "I actually turned the heat on a couple of times this year, we had a couple of chilly nights."

You may think carbon monoxide poisoning caused from a home furnace may not be a problem in Southwest Florida, but Dr. David Bishop says you need to think again. "Our last case was a leaky furnace. They hadn't had it on in a couple of years, got one cold night and they turned it on."

Dr. Bishop also says carbon monoxide is called the "silent killer" because there are no obvious signs that this deadly presence may have invaded your home. "CO is odorless, tasteless and colorless, you don't know it's there. People usually equate it with exhaust smell but it doesn't have to have an odor."

Dr. Bishop explains that breathing carbon monoxide for any prolonged period leads to the symptoms of CO poisoning. "The early stages of it are very slow, very common findings, very difficult to differentiate. Headache, mid headache and nausea, the headache gets more severe the nausea mental confusion can set in."

Dr. Bishop urges us that if you've been exposed, a specialized form of treatment called hyperbaric oxygen therapy can be used to significantly improve your chances of survival and reduce the risk of further damage. "You can shorten the time it takes to get half of the carbon monoxide out of somebody's body from about 5 or 6 hours down to about 25 minutes."

This form of therapy works by elevating the amount of oxygen in the body to over 1000% normal levels using a hyperbaric chamber.

Since carbon monoxide is odorless and colorless, the best way to prevent exposure is to install simple carbon monoxide detector alarms throughout your home.