House bill calls for all Pa. child care facilities to have CO alarms

HARRISBURG — Lawmakers in the Pennsylvania House unanimously agreed Wednesday to advance a bill mandating that carbon monoxide alarms be installed in all child care centers and family child care homes across the commonwealth.

House Bill 156 introduced by Rep. Jeanne McNeill, D-Lehigh, advanced out of the committee she chairs, Children & Youth, by a 26-0 vote with all Democrats and Republicans in support. The bill moved to the House floor for consideration of the full chamber.

McNeill’s latest bill would amend Pennsylvania’s Human Services Code to require the alarms. The bill itself was amended Wednesday to specify that alarms — hard-wired, battery-powered or plugged into an electrical outlet — must be installed within 15 feet of any “fossil-fuel-burning heater or appliance, fireplace or attached garage.”

At least one alarm must be installed on each level of a facility.

If approved, the Department of Labor & Industry would be tasked to serve written notice of the proposed mandate to all operators within 12 months. Facility operators would have 18 months from the date of the bill being signed into law to comply.

McNeill spoke Wednesday of first introducing a bill in 2022 that would have required carbon monoxide alarms in child care facilities. Sometime later, more than two dozen children and adults fell ill due to a leak at an Allentown daycare.

“I was heartbroken to know we could have prevented this with a bill if it had been passed when I first introduced it,” McNeill said Wednesday during a committee meeting.

The state Senate passed a bill mandating alarms in the 2021-22 session but it stalled in the House. The reverse happened in 2023-24 when a bill reintroduced by McNeill — her first measure gained no traction — cleared the House but moved no further.

Carbon monoxide is an odorless, colorless gas that on average causes more than 100,000 people nationwide to become sick with 14,000 hospitalized and 400 dead each year, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

The federal agency’s data shows 57 people died of carbon monoxide poisoning in Pennsylvania from 2018 through 2022, the latest data available.