Load-shedding – the health risks, and planning around them

The most serious health risk of a power cut is not the dark — it is what people burn to get through it. Carbon monoxide has no smell, no taste and no colour, and it kills people while they sleep.

• Never run a petrol or diesel generator indoors, in a garage, on a covered patio, or near an open window or door.
• Never bring a brazier, imbaula or braai indoors, including into a shack, tent or enclosed stoep. Coals that look nearly out still produce carbon monoxide.
• Never use a gas stove, gas heater or paraffin heater as room heating without ventilation.
• Keep a window open when using any gas appliance indoors, even briefly.

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Insulin, some eye drops, certain antibiotics made up as a syrup and several injectables need cold storage. A typical load-shedding slot is short enough not to matter, provided you handle the fridge correctly.

1. 1Keep the fridge door shut. An unopened fridge holds its temperature for several hours; opening it repeatedly is what causes the loss.
2. 2Put bottles of water in the empty spaces. A full fridge holds cold far longer than an empty one.
3. 3Keep insulin in the middle of the fridge, not the door and not against the back wall where it can freeze.
4. 4Insulin in use can generally be kept at room temperature for a set number of weeks — check the leaflet for your specific product and write the date on the pen when you start it.
5. 5For longer outages, a cooler bag with an ice brick works, as long as the medicine does not touch the ice directly.

If someone in the house uses home oxygen, a nebuliser, a CPAP machine or another powered device, that needs a plan made in advance rather than during the outage.

• Ask your supplier about a battery backup or a cylinder for backup, and about registering the address with the municipality where that is possible.
• Keep a spacer for asthma medication. A metered-dose inhaler with a spacer works as well as a nebuliser for most attacks and needs no electricity.
• Keep phones charged before a scheduled slot — a phone is how you call an ambulance.
• Keep a torch in a fixed place. Candles cause a large number of house fires, particularly in dense housing.

• A closed freezer keeps food frozen for roughly a day; a closed fridge keeps food safe for several hours.
• Throw away high-risk food — meat, poultry, cooked rice, dairy — that has been above fridge temperature for more than a couple of hours. It will not always smell wrong.
• Never refreeze food that has fully thawed.
• Water supply often depends on electric pumps, so keep drinking water stored.
• Traffic lights out means treat the intersection as a four-way stop, and expect others not to.
• Check on older neighbours and anyone living alone during long outages, particularly in very hot or very cold weather.