Can you spot the anomaly in London Fire Brigade's Breaking Bad-inspired carbon monoxide safety campaign?
The campaign poster highlights the chemical symbol for the metal cobalt rather than toxic gas carbon monoxide
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Your support makes all the difference.London Fire Brigade has launched a safety campaign to promote new laws over carbon monoxide detectors in rental properties, but something about this awareness poster doesn’t quite seem right.
The campaign poster - which states “Could kill you. Have you ordered yours yet?” - highlights the letters Co accompanied by the atomic number 27 – the chemical symbol for the hard, silver-grey metal.
Carbon monoxide, on the other hand, is a highly toxic, odourless compound gas made up of carbon and oxygen and is abbreviated by the symbol CO, which doesn’t appear on the periodic table and has no atomic number.
The poster, tweeted today alongside the words “BAD landlords listen up, if your tenants don’t have smoke alarms it’s you BREAKING the rules” alludes to the television series Breaking Bad, which has chemical symbols in its title sequence.
The mentions of the drastically different yet similarly abbreviated substances have caused confusion since the poster was tweeted today.
A spokesman said: “Using cobalt on the poster wasn’t a mistake; it was an intentional spin on Breaking Bad.
“We know that the symbol stands for cobalt, we did it off the back of Breaking Bad, using Breaking Bad as a hook so we can get the message across to landlords that they must install carbon monoxide detectors for their rental properties to protect their tenants from the gas which can be fatal if not discovered.
“If anything this will hopefully get people talking about it even more and get the message about carbon monoxide safety out there.”
Colourless and odourless, carbon monoxide is extremely hard to detect and, without a sufficient air supply, leaks of the toxic gas can be fatal if it fills an enclosed space.
Any connection between Breaking Bad's crystal meth-making antics and carbon monoxide detection remains unclear.
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