MEBANE, N.C.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--May 5, 2026--
Today, Kidde, North America’s #1 fire safety brand 1, is introducing a new line of its most advanced carbon monoxide (CO) alarms to help protect against the invisible, deadly threat. The devices come equipped with enhanced safety features – including low-level detection 2 – offering clear, easy-to-read alerts to support everyday living at home or away.
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Carbon monoxide is known as the “silent killer” because it is impossible to see, smell, or taste – making it easy to assume you’re safe when danger may already be present. Enhanced and low-level detection isn’t just a precaution; it helps save lives. Recent data shows a staggering 85.7% increase in CO poisoning deaths between 2012 and 2022 3, yet 36% of U.S. adults lack any means of detecting CO leaks in their homes 4, and more than half of households are currently at risk due to missing or non-functioning alarms 5.
This new product line empowers users with advanced sensitivity and peace of mind, featuring select devices that can alert families to low level concentrations of carbon monoxide. Low-level detection is especially important for more vulnerable populations like the elderly, children and pets. Designed for both at home and on the go, the collection also includes travel-ready, battery-powered detectors that provide an essential layer of safety during trips. By combining rapid detection with reliable, long-lasting power, these devices ensure users can act sooner and stay informed around the clock.
“Our latest innovation bridges the gap between smart technology and everyday life, ensuring safety is constant and follows you from your home to your travels,” said Isis Wu, President of Global Residential Fire & Safety at Kidde. “We’ve also engineered these solutions to solve common pain points – like the dreaded 2:00 AM low-battery chirp – because we believe reliability is the foundation of trust. In the world of fire safety, your devices ‘probably’ working and ‘probably’ being up to date is not a plan. Peace of mind can only come from being prepared.”
Product innovation highlights include:
The need for carbon monoxide detectors doesn’t end at home. With the busy summer travel season fast approaching, Kidde is reigniting its Destination Safety program, which is an education-first initiative designed to empower travelers to take control of their safety. Kidde’s new line of carbon monoxide alarms includes battery-powered devices that can provide detection and the same peace of mind one can expect at home in almost any travel accommodation 7. Kidde also encourages travelers to access the Travel Safety Checklist, which includes important tips for practicing CO safety while traveling.
Learn more about Kidde’s new devices at Kidde.com, which are now available at retailers nationwide.
About Kidde:
For over 100 years, Kidde has been a trusted name in fire safety, manufacturing residential smoke alarms, carbon monoxide detectors, fire extinguishers, and safety accessories. After introducing the first integrated smoke detection system a century ago, Kidde continues to set the standard and help protect people and property with advanced, smart and connected solutions for today’s modern consumer. For more information, visit kidde.com or follow Kidde on Facebook, Instagram, YouTube and LinkedIn.
Kidde’s new CO alarms, equipped with advanced detection technology and real-time displays, empower families to create strong safety plans and stay prepared before CO symptoms arise whether at home or while traveling.
Kidde’s new CO alarms, equipped with advanced detection technology and real-time displays, empower families to create strong safety plans and stay prepared before CO symptoms arise whether at home or while traveling.
CONCORD, N.H. (AP) — In 1985, a 13-year-old girl in New Zealand spotted a pair of purple, lip-shaped sunglasses in “Young Miss” magazine. In March, I traveled 9,000 miles from New Hampshire to deliver them to her, finally fulfilling my pen pal’s decades-old request.
International Youth Service, the agency that matched us up 40 years ago, has long since folded, but other pen pal programs have survived — or even began during — the internet age. And even though New Zealand's postal system has reduced home delivery days, Denmark has stopped delivering letters altogether and Canada is moving in that direction, some see signs of a letter-writing resurgence.
“The hunger is there,” said Rachel Syme, a writer for The New Yorker magazine who created a pen pal program during the COVID-19 pandemic and later published a book encouraging others to take up handwritten correspondence.
More than 15,000 people signed up for Syme’s Penpalooza project in 2020, and she still gets hundreds of takers when she coordinates a new round of matchmaking every few months. She also gets requests for pen pals at book signings for “Syme’s Letter Writer – A Guide to Modern Correspondence,” and the stationery stores she frequents in New York City are always crowded with customers.
“People are very interested in physical, analog things right now,” she said. “I think it really has an appeal especially to a younger generation who grew up with a phone glued to their hand, to do something that’s more tactile, slower, more intentional, more mindful, but also just disconnected from the internet in every way.”
I was still 10 years away from connecting to the internet when I opened my first aerogramme from New Zealand, a sheet of pale blue paper that served as both writing surface and envelope adorned with a 45-cent stamp. That missive ended with a formal “Yours (hopefully) Molly Nunns,” but within a year, she was signing off with “Lots and lots of love” or “Your friend forever.”
In letter after letter, Molly drew little hearts on the tails of y’s in both of our first names, asked for updates on my middle school crushes and shared stories about her classmates and family. I could clearly picture her life, though it was hard in snowy New Hampshire to imagine celebrating Christmas during the summer.
“I am thinking of you heaps and I wonder what you are doing because you’re a SUPER pen friend and I hope that we never stop writing to each other and that one day we will get to meet each other,” she wrote in early 1986.
Julie Delbridge, 65, fostered similar friendships after joining International Pen Friends as a teenager in 1979. Writing to pen pals in more than a dozen countries from her home in Australia was such a positive experience that she began working for the organization as an adult and took over as its president in 2001. While she loved sharing photos, postcards and treats with her pen friends, it also was a therapeutic experience at a time when her parents were going through a bitter divorce.
“It was a pastime that I totally immersed myself into in a positive way and gained a lot of enjoyment from,” she said. “There was an abundance of non-judgmental friendship, fun and different perspectives.”
Over its 59-year history, IPF has provided pen pals to more than 2 million people ages 8 to 80+, she said. Membership peaked in the late 1990s but surged again during the pandemic, and this year, there’s been an increase in people ages 21-26 joining.
In 2021, the U.S. Postal Service sent cards and envelopes to 25,000 elementary school classrooms for a pen pal project, but older students also are putting pen to paper.
In Texas, a group of medical students created an anonymous pen pal program to promote peer support and personal reflection. At Villanova University, professor Kamran Javadizadeh requires students to send letters to each other as part of a literature class called “Letters, Texts, Twitter” that examines different forms of epistolary communication in literature.
“I make them put pieces of paper in envelopes and take them to the post office and send them to each other even though they could just as easily hand it to the person in class,” he said. “Something is lost when you have instantaneous communication. So I’m interested in the relationship between synchronous kinds of intimacy and asynchronous forms of intimacy.”
Gordon Alley-Young, dean of communications at New York’s Kingsborough Community College, believes letters are like vinyl records — they’re coming back into fashion as young people explore a tangible medium from the past. He has both studied the history of letter writing and used it to teach students empathy.
In an interpersonal communication class, he noticed that students analyzing case studies about relationship problems offered matter-of-fact, almost insensitive diagnoses. But when he re-wrote the case studies in the form of letters from friends and had students respond in kind, they began sharing their own feelings and offering more open-ended advice.
“We really want students to connect to what they’re looking at,” he said. “And letter writing encourages that.”
An app called Slowly seeks to combine modern technology with the old-fashioned anticipation inherent to the pen pal relationship. Users send messages digitally, but delivery is delayed from an hour to several days to mimic snail mail.
“This delay naturally encourages longer, more thoughtful messages because you wouldn’t just say ‘hi’ if you know you have to wait days for a reply,” said cofounder JoJo Chan.
Since 2017, the app has gained 10 million users in more than 160 countries, most in their 20s and 30s. One user said he was curious about pen pals after hearing about them from his grandparents, Chan said.
“Slowly offers a convenient way and a modern way for them to try that experience,” she said.
Syme, however, is all about the tangible aspects of letter writing. Her book includes advice on paper and pens plus all kinds of goodies that can be tucked into envelopes.
“There is joy to be had once you fully embrace the medium’s outdated extravagance,” she writes.
But letter writing, she said in an interview, is like a swimming pool, both shiny and deep. The frippery and embellishments don’t matter in comparison to what you actually put on the page.
“That’s where I think it can get very real, very quickly,” she said.
Molly and I had been writing for 15 years by the time we met in person, spending a day together in New York when she toured the U.S. in May 2000. We crossed paths in London a few years later, and in 2018, she and her family visited New Hampshire.
“Who would have thought when we started writing in 1985 that one day you’d be sitting here? It’s quite amazing,” she said during my recent visit. “We’ll always have a special connection, I’m sure.”
In addition to the sunglasses, I also gave Molly a bound book of 200 pages of her letters that I scanned and printed. At age 13, I never could have imagined that someday I’d have searchable PDFs of our teenage scribblings that could be summarized in 10 seconds by artificial intelligence. But what amazes me more is the depth of the connection I felt during our tearful airport goodbye.
We will for sure meet again. Until then, lots and lots of love, Holly.
Some of the hundreds of letters AP reporter Holly Ramer has received from her pen pal in New Zealand are displayed in Bow, N.H., Thursday, April 9, 2026. (AP Photo/Holly Ramer)
