Our son was so unwell we were told he might have cancer… then a mechanic looked at our car’s exhaust

A mother warned it was only a matter of time before her child died after her son developed symptoms of lymphoma when deadly exhaust fumes began leaking from their car.

Dr., 50, from Amersham, Buckinghamshire. Sophie Duggan was driving on a rural road in 2013 when her car’s exhaust became loose and they booked the car in for repairs.

The medical examiner said his middle son, Freddie, who was six at the time, complained of unexplained swollen lymph nodes, night sweats and weight loss.

‘These symptoms were very, very worrying. Speaking to Daily Mail, Dr. “These problems started when he was around two years old and were getting worse over the years,” Duggan said.

‘We had reached the stage where we could properly investigate it medically.

‘The doctor told us it was lymphoma until proven otherwise and that was extremely scary.

‘Freddie went to have his lymph nodes scanned and the results came back as non-cancerous, but medically it was still a mystery what was going on.’

Instead of the doctors being able to explain what was happening, Dr. Duggan said it was a mechanic at the garage who discovered the family was breathing deadly carbon monoxide from a faulty exhaust pipe.

The medical researcher said middle son Freddie (pictured) suffered from unexplained swollen lymph nodes, night sweats and weight loss.

High levels of the colorless and odorless gas can cause physical symptoms and be fatal within a few hours.

Carbon monoxide is especially dangerous for pregnant women and can affect the development of the baby by binding to cells and limiting the amount of blood carried throughout the body.

Dr Duggan said: ‘When we came to collect the car the man in the garage asked us. Whether any members of the family have had unexplained medical problems in the past few years.

‘It was a weird thing for a mechanic to ask that and I said ‘yes’. Then he said, “well, I diagnosed it in the garden.”

‘He showed us what was left of the car’s exhaust system.

‘The inside was completely clogged with wet, sticky black soot. It was rusted in places.’

‘Then we got out of the car and perhaps coincidentally or not, Freddie’s symptoms disappeared. This was surprising.

‘But it was still incredibly worrying to think that we had been breathing exhaust fumes without realizing it for God knows how many years.’

Dr Duggan discovered there was a data gap in the UK regarding carbon monoxide levels in cars.

Lucy Barnard, 26, (pictured) also nearly died from carbon monoxide when her car hit a ditch

Miss Barnard, who is six months pregnant, said her father Terry, 63, looked at the car (pictured) and noticed its exhaust was badly damaged by the pothole.

Ms Barnard was particularly aware of the dangers of carbon monoxide after her brother Michael, 36, died when his car filled with the deadly gas (pictured together)

He was awarded a grant from the Carbon Monoxide Research Foundation to go and measure what people were breathing in their vehicles.

‘The mechanic who found a fault in our car’s exhaust said it was something he saw all the time. ‘It’s on many vehicles every week, every week,’ Dr Duggan said.

‘I examined 33 cars’and i found Some are truly frightening numbers. So 60 percent of the cars had some carbon monoxide, and a few of those were really bad.

‘The worst car I tested was the BMW Z4. It was 13 years old, a gasoline engine, and had an average carbon monoxide level of 192 parts per million.

‘And when the driver stepped on the throttle, the peak levels actually exceeded the recording range of the data logger I was using.

‘That’s how bad that car was.

Dr Duggan’s story is the latest in many cases where people have nearly lost their lives from carbon monoxide poisoning in cars.

Earlier this month, 26-year-old pregnant mother Lucy Barnard told how she was nearly killed by a pothole that damaged her exhaust and filled her car with deadly fumes.

He was returning home to Walney Island, Cumbria, when he suddenly heard a crashing sound after his Ford Fiesta hit a pothole.

A few minutes later, the carbon monoxide detector he installed in his car began rising to lethal levels.

Ms Barnard was particularly aware of the dangers of carbon monoxide after her brother Michael, 36, died after his car was gassed in August 2023.

Dr Duggan said: ‘I have a great hunch about this. Nothing will be done until a child dies and I think it is inevitable that a child dies.

‘Won’t there be new ones on the road four years from now, partly because children are more vulnerable, but also because of petrol and diesel cars?

‘People will increasingly drive older petrol or diesel cars.

‘And my study showed a statistically significant relationship between the age of the car and the likelihood of the driver and passengers breathing carbon monoxide.

‘Freddie is fit and well at the moment. 18 years old. But it was very, very scary. And of course, like people, whenever it gets worse, there’s always anxiety.

‘We’re wondering if this is a pre-cancerous thing that could possibly come back. ‘Nobody can know that.’

Dr Duggan called for appropriate equipment to be made available for people to use to test carbon monoxide levels in their cars.

He said: ‘If I had a magic wand, one of them would be for people to be able to go out and buy something reliable, maybe something easy to use that they can talk to on their mobile phone.The hat can tell them what they’re breathing in their cars.

‘Another thing might be that the MOT includes in-cabin air quality testing.

‘And the third thing I’d like to see change is that when you go to your doctor with symptoms suggestive of CO poisoning and the clinical manifestation of this is much more extensive than you thought, doctors can send you home with a monitor that can test your breathing.’