[BITList] When will Australia recognise this problem?

[John Feltham]

Will your holiday flight poison you? The toxic fumes leaking onto  
planes and the people who have suffered their effects
By TOM RAWSTORNE
Last updated at 1:38 AM on 28th March 2009

Comments (0)
Add to My Stories


Sitting in the cabin of the jumbo jet as it headed across the  
Atlantic, Emily Graeme and her family were looking forward to a  
fortnight in Florida. Little did they know that their holiday would be  
wrecked before the plane had even touched down.

'We were halfway through the flight when my six-year-old daughter  
complained of a funny smell and was then violently sick,' says Emily,  
37. Over the next few days, other family members became ill. Emily  
suffered severe flu-like symptoms and breathing problems.

'I couldn't move. I was wheezing and had lots of crackling in my  
chest,' she says. 'It was just awful. I really thought something  
serious was wrong.'



Dangerous: Passengers face short and long-term ill-health from toxic  
fumes released during flights

At first, she assumed the family was suffering from a virus. But when  
she arrived at the airport for the flight home her suspicions were  
roused.

'You can imagine my surprise when I realised other passengers had the  
same symptoms. I spoke to five, then ten, then 15 other people. I  
spoke to more than 40 in the end.'

Bemused, on her return home Emily consulted doctors. They told her she  
was not suffering from a virus or bacterial infection and ruled out  
food poisoning  -  the holidaymakers affected had been seated in  
different parts of the plane and had eaten different meals. Emily had  
eaten only bread.

So what was the mystery illness? Today, Emily, whose family continue  
to suffer ill health, is convinced she and her children had fallen  
victim to what is known as 'aerotoxic syndrome'.

The phrase has been coined to describe the illness that results when  
the air that plane passengers breathe becomes contaminated with a  
cocktail of chemicals from the aircraft's engines.

Said to affect the body in much the same way that nerve gas does, the  
consequences of inhalation appear to be instant and long-lasting.

'The only thing my family and the other passengers had in common was  
that we travelled on the same plane and breathed the same air,' says  
Emily.

But when she contacted the airline to raise her concerns she was met  
with a point-blank denial that any such contamination could have  
occurred. And not everyone is surprised.

According to campaigners, pilots, aircrew and passengers continue to  
be the victims of a massive cover-up. Pressure groups representing  
those affected claim that for the past 50 years there has been a  
fundamental flaw in the way in which air is pumped into planes.

All it takes is an oil leak in an engine and in a matter of seconds  
poisonous fumes will fill the cabin. The effects, as Emily contends,  
can ruin a holiday. But if it is the pilot who falls ill, the  
consequences are potentially far, far more serious.

British politicians are waking up to the growing groundswell of  
concern. 'I have been dealing with environmental threats long enough  
to know that quite often they turn out to have some basis in reality,'  
says Norman Baker, the Lib Dem transport spokesman, who is calling for  
a public inquiry.

'I campaigned for many years about the threat from pesticides and we  
were told there was no problem. That was shown to be totally wrong.

'People were also told for a long time there was no threat of lung  
cancer from smoking. That was shown to be wrong. There is an innate  
resistance to any suggestion that there is a threat. And, in this  
case, it certainly suits the industry to believe there isn't.'



Thousands of UK holidaymakers will board flights over the summer  
without realising the health risks

Next weekend, Britain's airports will be running at full capacity as  
holidaymakers head abroad for an Easter break.

Having battled through the crowds, they will finally take their place  
in a cramped seat on a packed plane. As is the custom, the cabin crew  
will take their positions in the aisle and run through the safety drill.

'Ladies and gentleman, I'd first like to welcome you aboard,' the  
loudspeaker message begins. 'During this flight we will be providing  
you with air drawn directly from the engines, which will be pumped  
into the cabin through vents in the ceiling. We wish to inform  
passengers that the air taken from the engines sometimes becomes  
contaminated with engine oils or hydraulic fluids.

'When this occurs, you will be inhaling a selection of neurotoxins and  
carcinogens, exposure to which may cause short and long-term health  
problems.

'Because you cannot open a window, you cannot escape these toxins. But  
you won't see anything and you might not detect the smell of these  
chemicals. We hope you have a pleasant flight.'

A fanciful scenario? Not if the airlines were being open and honest,  
says former British Airways captain Tristan Loraine.

Due to ill health, he was forced to retire as a pilot three years ago,  
something he blames on repeated 'fume events'  -  the term given to in- 
flight air contamination.

He believes the health of as many as 200,000 air passengers could be  
similarly damaged every year. 'I have had nervous system effects from  
breathing heated engine oil,' he says.

'My colleagues at work, pilots and flight attendants, have also  
suffered nervous system effects. Doctors have found the toxic chemical  
present in jet engine oil within my blood. I have been contaminated,  
others have been contaminated and more people will be contaminated.'

Indeed, he says that since stopping work he has taken 20 flights as a  
passenger and on more than half has noticed the tell-tale smell of  
contaminated air.

'I'll often turn to the person next to me and ask if they can smell  
anything and if so what they think it is,' he says.

'They'll reply that they don't know and generally add: "If it was  
harmful I'm sure they would tell us." That goes to the heart of it.  
Airlines are not  telling people.'

To understand aerotoxic syndrome it is first necessary to understand  
where the air within a pressurised cabin comes from. At any one point  
in a flight, half of the air is re-circulated - processed by the  
ventilation system and passed through filters to clean it.


Many Brits will pack their bags and head to warmer climes but due to  
toxins they may not to enjoy the break

But the potential problem lies in the other 50 per cent of cabin air.  
This is because it comes from deep within the engines flying the plane.

Bled off from the engine before the fuel is injected and burnt, this  
'bleed air' is piped back to the fuselage, where it is cooled and then  
pumped into the cabin.

Crucially, this air undergoes no filtration whatsoever. It therefore  
stands to reason that whatever chemicals and toxins it may have picked  
up from the engine can pass straight into the aircraft - and into the  
lungs of those on board.

The chemicals at the heart of the controversy originate in the oil  
lubricating the engine. The oil is supposed to remain in the engine,  
but, as with a car, the seals can leak or fail.

This is most likely to occur when the engines are being worked hard,  
the plane is climbing and during take-off and landing. This vaporised  
jet oil contains a cocktail of chemicals but of most concern are the  
potentially carcinogenic organophosphates, one of which is - tricresyl  
phosphate, or TCP.

In humans, organophosphates disrupt the neurotransmitters involved in  
muscle function. High-level exposure affects the heart and lungs, and  
can cause limbs to tremor. They also cause cognitive impairment,  
disorientation and poor memory.

Farmers handling pesticides and sheep dips have suffered in this way.  
So, too, it would seem, have airline passengers.

Fume events do not occur on every flight by any means. But they do  
tend to be more prevalent on certain aeroplanes - the British  
Aerospace 146, the Boeing 757, the Airbus A319 and the Embraer 145  
seem particularly susceptible.

Pilots are clearly at greater risk than passengers. This is  
particularly worrying on two levels. First, individual incidents can  
cause immediate problems. Second, continued exposure can lead to a  
gradual deterioration.

Neils Gomer, a Swiss airline captain, experienced a serious fume event  
in 1999. 'During the descent, my first officer told me he was feeling  
really bad and was close to vomiting,' he said.

'He went on to oxygen. I felt confused and, five seconds later I, too,  
was close to vomiting. I just managed to put on my mask, after which I  
could hardly move. We were flying at 600 miles an hour, late at night,  
both of us more or less incapacitated. I could not even raise my hand,  
I could not talk - it was as if I was paralysed.'

Gomer later learned that the flight's 73 passengers were so deeply  
asleep that it was difficult to wake them up - a fact confirmed by the  
accident investigator, who noted that passengers were in a 'zombie- 
like condition'.

While Gomer recovered sufficiently to land the plane, he believes that  
if he had delayed putting on his mask, there would have been a crash.

That was a close shave. But could other plane crashes have been caused  
by air contamination? Captain Loraine thinks so. In the Nineties, 34  
per cent of crashes in the U.S. were caused by pilot error.

'If there is a problem, the crew has to react quickly,' says Mr  
Loraine, who is co-chairman of the Global Cabin Air Quality Executive,  
which represents aviation workers on this issue.

'If their cognitive process has been impaired, then their decision- 
making ability isn't going to be as quick, so they may make the wrong  
decision.



Airports like Heathrow will be at their busiest for the next few  
months with summer flights selling out


'In any subsequent inquiry, the airline industry will say this pilot  
made the wrong decision, but they will never ask why they made the  
wrong decision.

'There is enough evidence to show that some people have been lucky to  
survive. Isn't it likely that some have not lived to tell the story?'

Dr Sarah Mackenzie Ross, a clinical neuropsychologist at University  
College London, recently conducted a study looking at 27 pilots who  
had been referred to her for assessment.

Having previously undertaken Government research looking at the  
effects of organophosphates on agricultural workers, she was intrigued  
by the similarities between the cases.

'I had never heard of this particular problem with pilots before and I  
approached it with a bit of scepticism,' she says.

'My thought was that if there was much of a problem then planes would  
be falling out of the sky all the time. When I started testing the  
pilots, it was clear they were incredibly bright individuals and,  
initially, it was not obvious they had any weaknesses.'

But when she studied their test scores closely she found they were all  
under-performing in the same way.

'They were bad on tests of response speed - what we call mental  
flexibility or multi-tasking - and of memory,' she says. 'In other  
words, they were bad at the sort of things you would hope a pilot  
would be good at.'

The pilots struggled to memorise strings of numbers - something they  
typically have to do when in conversation with air-traffic  
controllers. The symptoms they showed matched those seen in people  
exposed to organophosphates.

'The results for the pilots and the farmers were remarkably similar -  
they had the same strengths and weaknesses,' she says. 'The fact that  
they were all under-performing in the same way does make it look as if  
there is some sort of connection, some underlying common factor.'

Does she think this is a problem that should concern the public? 'I  
think the industry accepts cabin air can be contaminated from time to  
time,' says Dr Mackenzie Ross.

'We know the chemicals in the mixture are potentially neurotoxic, but  
we don't know what quantities are coming in.

'Some people argue that they are so low we shouldn't be concerned. But  
my argument would be that there is a potential for harm and therefore  
it is worthy of further investigation.'

The need for further scientific study was highlighted by an  
investigation carried out last month by Swiss and German TV.  
Journalists secretly took 31 swabs from aircraft cabins on leading  
airlines.

These were analysed at the University of British Columbia under the  
supervision of Professor Christiaan Van Netten, a leading  
toxicologist. Twenty-eight swabs were found to have dangerously high  
levels of the organophosphate TCP.

The highest reading was 154.9 micrograms - 1,000 times higher than in  
healthy samples.

While the airlines insist you can't extrapolate from those figures the  
amount of chemicals in the air as opposed to on a surface such as a  
seat, Professor Van Netten says the findings are significant. There  
shouldn't be any TCP in the aircraft.

'It should be in the engine. That certainly means oil has been burnt  
and has entered the cabin, and that people have been inhaling that  
material,' he says.

Solutions to the problem are twofold. One is to do what will happen on  
the new Boeing 787 Dreamliner, which takes to the skies soon. It will  
use electronically compressed air taken from outside the plane rather  
than air from the engines.

Another solution would be to fit filters to clean the bleed air. It  
sounds simple, so why hasn't it been done? Peter Jackson is from the  
Independent Pilots' Association, which represents 950 commercial and  
private pilots.

Twelve members have lost their flying licences on medical grounds -  
which they attribute to oil fumes in the cabin cockpit.

'The Government and the industry don't want to go down the route of  
accepting it is a problem because it will be exceedingly costly if  
every plane that utilises engine bleed air has to have filters  
fitted,' he says. 'That would then mean re-certifying the aeroplane.'

The Department of Transport denies this, saying there is no point in  
fitting filters because no one knows exactly what they would be trying  
to filter out.

This is because no samples have ever been taken of the air in a plane  
following a fume event. Work is being carried out by British  
scientists to address this problem.

The Civil Aviation Authority states there is no evidence to conclude  
that there is a causal link between cabin air exposure and ill health  
in commercial aircraft crews.

A spokesman added: 'We take any evidence of health risk to pilots and  
cabin crew very seriously. The CAA will continue to closely monitor  
any reports of contaminated cabin air on UK-registered aircraft and  
will ensure that existing measures to maintain flight safety are  
strictly enforced.'

So what can passengers do in the meantime? Captain Loraine says anyone  
worried about a smell when boarding a plane should get off. If that is  
impossible, they should report the incident to the CAA and, if they  
later feel ill, inform their doctor.

Another campaigning group, the Aerotoxic Association, has started  
selling charcoal-lined Flyer's Friend face masks that can be fitted in  
the eventuality of cabin contamination. But, like a cyclist's smog  
mask, they are flimsy.

Only a tiny minority of the parents and children flying off for some  
Easter sun next week will take such protection. The thousands of  
others must hope it's not their turn to experience a 'fume event' that  
could turn their holiday into a nightmare


ooroo

Bad typists of the word, untie.




-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://lists.bcn.mythic-beasts.com/pipermail/bitlist/attachments/20090328/709c3d5c/attachment-0001.shtml 
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: article-1165380-04221761000005DC-769_468x286.jpg
Type: image/jpeg
Size: 34310 bytes
Desc: not available
Url : http://lists.bcn.mythic-beasts.com/pipermail/bitlist/attachments/20090328/709c3d5c/attachment-0004.jpg 
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: article-1165380-03ECD9A7000005DC-237_468x286.jpg
Type: image/jpeg
Size: 51454 bytes
Desc: not available
Url : http://lists.bcn.mythic-beasts.com/pipermail/bitlist/attachments/20090328/709c3d5c/attachment-0005.jpg 
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: article-1165380-0408491C000005DC-1_468x286.jpg
Type: image/jpeg
Size: 62606 bytes
Desc: not available
Url : http://lists.bcn.mythic-beasts.com/pipermail/bitlist/attachments/20090328/709c3d5c/attachment-0006.jpg 
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: article-1165380-0400F055000005DC-109_468x286.jpg
Type: image/jpeg
Size: 58399 bytes
Desc: not available
Url : http://lists.bcn.mythic-beasts.com/pipermail/bitlist/attachments/20090328/709c3d5c/attachment-0007.jpg