Okay, so to understand how to get rid of CO poisoning, first you need to understand how it poisons us:
Our body transports oxygen around the body by the use of haemoglobin. Oxygen comes in, it binds to haemoglobin, haemoglobin takes it to where it needs to go. However, if something is already bound to haemoglobin, then the oxygen can't bind to it - and this is where carbon monoxide comes in. Carbon monoxide can also bind to haemoglobin - but haemoglobin can only have 1 of these chemicals bound at a time, and it's really difficult for oxygen to bind if carbon monoxide is around*
So, if someone has carbon monoxide poisoning, then how can we get oxygen to bind? Well, remember that no reaction is truly ever 1 way - even if carbon monoxide will bind preferentially, there's still an equilibrium at play - namely:
Hb4(CO)4 + 4O2 <==> Hb4(O2)4 + 4CO
Now, remember - we want our haemoglobin to to bind to oxygen, not carbon monoxide. If we look in our chemical toolbox, we know that Le Chatlier's principle gives us a list of ways to push the equilibrium from one side to the other. Can you:
a) figure out what side we want to push towards?
b) figure out what we could do to push the equilibrium to that side?
For bonus points - knowing that the haemoglobin prefers to bind CO, can you figure out whether the equilibrium constant K is:
a) Greater than 1
b) Equal to 1
c) Less than 1
*=the reason for this is beyond VCE and is first year uni level - but also it's not that difficult and I think the concept is really cool. Basically, carbon monoxide is a little weird in that it has a lone pair on the carbon. See, carbon doesn't like having electrons on it - it makes it more unstable. Metals, on the other hand, are typically positively charged and REALLY want electrons. In fact, they're often so big that the electrons they do have aren't particularly close to them. So, when the carbon monoxide notices the big, fat, electron-hungry iron in the centre of haemoglobin, it dives carbon-first onto the metal. And, unlike the bonds you study in VCE, it forms what's called a coordination bond - instead of the iron and the carbon sharing an electron, both of the electrons come from the carbon. Meanwhile, oxygen is very stable in its configuration - it's quite happy with its electron arrangement. But, when it sees that iron all by itself, it decides to share so it can offload for a little bit. As a result, it'll still bind to the iron in haemoglobin, but much more weakly. As a result, if the haemoglobin has a choice between having molecular oxygen or carbon monoxide bind, it's going to pick the carbon monoxide every time. In inorganic chemistry, we say that this happens because carbon monoxide is a "stronger field ligand". Note that it isn't always true that the stronger field ligand binds preferentially, because it also depends on the metal (we say based on how "hard" or "soft" it is) and for more complicated molecules other effects can come into play, but that's a discussion for second year inorganic chemistry.
EDIT: Welp, I got beaten twice, daaaaang. Leaving this here for my dope interest paragraph I put at the end
Edit: clearly got the equations wrong but the same principles apply. Haven't done chem in less than a year and already have forgotten most, I don't know how y'all do it
Straight up, I had to double check the equation in a textbook I don't even own anymore, don't feel bad (insert upside down smiley face emoji that I can't find D:). And if you mean by my combining the two into one equation, that was me cheating
The textbook mentions the two separately as well