10-year recall continues of Servel refrigerators

A gas-powered refrigerator manufactured from 1933 to 1957, with a design based on a patent by Albert Einstein, is connected to 22 carbon monoxide-related fatalities and 55 injuries nationally, and an additional 60 deaths in Canada.

The refrigerator, with the brand name Servel, was a workhorse during its production heyday, and many of them are still being used, including in Maine, according to Hugh Bode, a Cleveland attorney associated with a 10-year recall campaign.

“The thing was built like a tank, with hinges of sheet steel. It was rock-solid,” he said. “The problem is there are no instruction manuals around anymore, and no replacement parts are being made.”

The lack of parts and instructions, coupled with improper maintenance and ventilation at the points of installation, have resulted in refrigerators that can produce deadly amounts of carbon monoxide, a product of incomplete combustion of carbon.

Also, any refrigerator with an improperly adjusted or partially plugged burner can produce carbon monoxide in deadly quantities. Refrigerators kept at camps, which may be turned off during the winter and restarted in the spring, can become clogged with debris and run the risk of poor and incomplete combustion.

“Incredibly, the refrigerators are still being used in recreation camps in remote areas, and by people who aren’t served with electricity, such as Amish and Mennonites [in Ohio and Pennsylvania, predominantly], and by people who live in very remote areas,” Bode said.

The organization responsible for the safety campaign is the Servel Corrective Action Committee. According to SCAC, Maine ranks among the top 10 states in number of requests for recall information in the last 10 years.

The committee has recorded only one incident in Maine, in the early 1990s, when a woman became unconscious because of carbon monoxide from a refrigerator. She later recovered.

Since 1991, 1,030 refrigerators from Maine have been turned in. Nationally, more than 25,000 have been recovered. Now, the stream has dwindled to perhaps 10-12 refrigerators a week. But the informational message is still the same, Bode said.

“We will pay a $100 rebate plus reimbursement for reasonable disposal costs to a dump or landfill,” he said.

“I want to make it clear that turning in a Servel is not mandatory, but because of the potential risk involved, we want to advise if people decide to keep them, that the refrigerator receive yearly servicing by a qualified technician, and that the refrigerator be kept out of doors in a protected shed of some kind. And the shed or refrigerator needs to be kept locked to prevent suffocation deaths,” he said.

Bode said that some people have been known to collect several of the refrigerators in order to harvest parts to fix the one they have. “The trouble with that is, they may be getting the wrong part, anyway.”