Refrigerators use a gas called freon to improve the cooling of the entire appliance. The same gas is used in your air conditioner. So, what if this gas leaks from your refrigerator and into your home or even your food? Can a refrigerator freon leak kill you or, at the very least, cause health problems?
Freon, when it leaks into your home, is a dangerous gas that can cause minor health problems such as nausea, headaches, irritation, or anything similar to those. However, as unpleasant as a freon leak may be, there is little to no chance that a refrigerator freon leak will be lethal to you.
Even though freon can be toxic, that doesn’t mean that it can actually kill you. Freon has to be in the air in very high concentrations for it to have serious effects on anyone’s health. But that doesn’t mean that you should just leave a freon leak in your home as it is.
You have to understand that you still need to quickly remedy the situation whenever you notice that your refrigerator is leaking freon.
Is Freon Dangerous?
There is no doubt that the refrigerator is one of the most important appliances that any home can have because it keeps the food fresh and cold so that our food can last as long as it should. Refrigerators are known to be able to produce cold air in a hurry. And that is due in large part to how it uses a refrigerant called freon.
Freon is a colorless and odorless gas that is circulated throughout the refrigerator’s coils to help the home appliance produce cool air that will keep your food frozen or cold.
Freon is dangerous. Freon is a gas that is tied to a lot of different health problems whenever it is inhaled at high concentrations. Normally, when small amounts of freon are inhaled, this can eventually lead to minor health issues such as nausea, dizziness, irritation, or headaches. But when inhaled in higher concentrations, this can cause vomiting and even respiratory problems that can be tied to breathing difficulties diarrhea, and other similar issues.
As such, when sold, freon is actually packaged in a way that will prevent people from accidentally inhaling it.
Can A Freon Leak Kill You?
While we did say that freon can be dangerous to your health as it may cause minor respiratory issues that you certainly will find irritating and annoying if you are exposed to small amounts of freon in the air, does that mean that freon can also kill you when you have inhaled a lot of it?
When a damaged refrigerator refrigerator is leaking freon, what you need to know is that the freon that it leaks won’t be too much to the point that the concentrations in the air will be overpowering. This means that, if you have a freon leak in your refrigerator, the most likely scenario is that the leak will be minor and that the freon in the air will be just as minor as well.
On top of that, a freon leak in your home’s refrigerator won’t immediately expose you to dangerous levels of freon in the air because of how most homes are ventilated well enough such that the ventilation system will be more than enough to disperse the freon into the atmosphere. This means that there is little to no chance that you will be exposing yourself to dangerous freon levels in your home if there is a freon leak.
And even if you do actually experience inhaling high levels of freon in the air especially if the leak is major and your home’s ventilation system did not do its job properly, the freon leak still won’t probably kill you directly.
Freon in itself isn’t toxic enough to kill you even though it might end up causing major health issues and respiratory problems.
Pre-existing Complications
The most probable reason why someone could end up dying due to a freon leak is due to if they already have pre-existing health and respiratory problems that are only compounded by a freon leak.
As a result, a freon leak may end up making things more complicated such that the leak will make it more difficult for you to breathe if you already have breathing problems.
Asphyxiation
Freon may end up becoming lethal when the concentrations in the air are so high that the freon displaces the oxygen. When that happens, it really isn’t freon that is killing you directly. Instead, what will kill you is the lack of oxygen in the air and the asphyxiation that will come as a result of that lack of oxygen. This is the same with any kind of gas regardless of whether that gas is lethal or not.
It’s really similar to how people die in a burning building even if they were able to keep themselves away from the flames. Due to how the carbon dioxide coming from the fire takes over the place of oxygen in the air, you will end up dying from asphyxiation due to the lack of oxygen.
Most homes are ventilated well enough such that it will be too rare for freon to actually be in concentrations abundant enough to displace oxygen.
In conclusion, the chances of a freon leak killing you is close to zero but it still is possible.