Originally Posted by
PDR1
CO poisoning produces permanent damage to red blood cells - it's a signature which remains and can be identified even in a long-deceased body and it gives fairly precise values of the scale. CO poisoning is not just a matter of lack of oxygen (as happens with CO2) - it is actually a poisonous gas. CO "locks" the haemoglobin in the blood such that it can't take oxygen even when it's present. If you suffer CO poisoning beyond a certain level even getting you away from the CO and giving you 100% oxygen via a mask won't save you - you will die unless you are given a rapid and massive transfusion of red blood cells (which is rarely possible).
So the detection of CO poisoning in "a body that had been under seawater for so many days" is not in any way remarkable or strange.
PDR
Cold you point me to some background on that? My understanding is that, as you say, CO binds very tightly to Hb blocking O2 attachment, but I wasn't aware of any detectable damage to the rbc's themselves. And even if that was the case, I would expect virtually every rbc to be lysed so long post mortem. I had assumed that CO would eventually dissociate from Hb after death because of all the changes that must completely screw-up the Hb molecule. i guess maybe some blood deep in the tissues would be preserved well enough for an analysis?