After failing to show up for work Tuesday, a prominent Salt Lake attorney was found dead in his home.
A secretary at the downtown law firm called a neighbor around 10:30 a.m. when Bruce H. Jensen didn't show up as usual. The neighbor entered Jensen's home, near 1100 East and 1000 South, and found his body on the bed, said Salt Lake Fire spokesman Scott Freitag.
"I don't know how to describe it, to see your friend lying on the bed," neighbor Bill Dowse told KSL-TV.
Jensen, 52, lived alone and no one else was in the home at the time. Freitag said he had been dead for a few hours and that the medical examiner took the body and performed an autopsy. It was determined Jensen died from carbon monoxide poisoning.
Crews returned to the home to test for the chemical and found it was at 130 parts per million, well above Qwestar's safety standard of 50 parts per million.
"There weren't extremely high levels of carbon monoxide in the home, but he was exposed to moderate levels over several days," Freitag said.
The source of the fumes is believed to be a leak in the boiler heating system.
"It was an older home with an old boiler that hadn't been inspected for a long time," Freitag said.
Had the boiler been working properly, he said, carbon monoxide would not have been a problem. However, Freitag said, a carbon monoxide detector, available for as little as $20, "would have alerted him there was a problem in the house."
Coworkers reported that Jensen had mentioned not feeling well since Friday. He had told them he was experiencing nausea and other flu-like symptoms, also symptomatic of the poisoning, which slowly takes over red blood cells in the body.
Jensen is the first person to die of carbon monoxide poisoning in Salt Lake City this year, but Freitag said problems with the harmful fumes are more common than fire-related smoke inhalation.
"You can't see it, taste it or smell it, as it is a colorless, flavorless and odorless gas," he said.
Freitag recommended regular furnace inspections and installing a detector which emits an audible alarm when excessive levels of the fumes are experienced.
"People often go many days (breathing the gas) without even knowing it," he said.
E-mail: wleonard@desnews.com