Toxic risk to air crews
Alert to regular fliers after pilot’s years of ill-health
FREQUENT fliers and aircrew are risking their health by breathing in toxic fumes inside aircraft cabins, according to coroner probing the death of an Edinburgh pilot.
Stanhope Payne, the senior coroner for Dorset, said people regularly exposed to fumes circulating in planes faced “consequential damage to their health”.
Mr Payne, who is looking into the death of Richard Westgate, a 43-year-old British Airways pilot from Edinburgh, called on BA and the Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) to take “urgent action to prevent future deaths”.
Mr Westgate suffered years of ill-health including severe headaches, mental confusion, sight problems and insomnia before he died in December 2012, blaming exposure to toxic fumes on the flight deck.
The coroner’s report is the first official UK recognition of so-called “aerotoxic syndrome”, a phenomenon long denied by airlines but which is blamed by some for the deaths of at least two pilots and incidents where pilots have passed out in flight.
Co-pilots can normally take over, but campaigners claim the syndrome is a suspected cause of some mid-air disasters.
Most airline passengers, who fly only occasionally, will not be affected by the problem, but some frequent travellers who are genetically susceptible to the toxins could fall ill. Frank Cannon, the lawyer for Mr Westgate’s case, said: “This report is dynamite. It is the first time a British coroner has come to the conclusion damage is being done by cabin air, something the industry has been denying for years.”
He added: “There are major crashes where we suspect the only plausible explanation is that the crew were suffering from cognitive dysfunction. More commonly, it causes incredible misery – very fit, intelligent and motivated people fall over sick.”
Mr Cannon said he was acting for approximately 50 other aircrew allegedly affected by the syndrome, working for airlines including Emirates, Cathay Pacific, Etihad, Thomas Cook and easyJet. He is also representing two passengers.
Commercial passenger planes have a system which compresses air from the engines and uses it to pressurise the cabin. However, this can malfunction and lead to excess oil particles entering the air supply.
In a confined space the air effect on frequent fliers, especially aircrew, can be harmful, the coroner said.
In his “prevention of future deaths report”, Mr Payne said examinations of Mr Westgate’s body “disclosed symptoms consistent with exposure to organophosphate compounds in cabin air”.
The coroner demands that BA and the CAA respond to the report within eight weeks.
Tristan Loraine, a former BA captain who claims toxic air poisoning forced him to leave his job, said: “I took ill-health retirement only a year after completing the Ironman triathlon. I had about 10 medical experts give their view to the CAA that I was suffering from ill-health effects of contaminated air.
Mr Loraine said he had been left with numbness in his fingers and feet and sometimes found it difficult to recall information. He said that a friend in BA — not Mr Westgate — had suffered the same symptoms, continued to fly and died from a brain tumour aged 44.
A spokesman for BA said it could not comment on the case, but would consider the coroner’s report and respond. The airline cites independent studiest, which found “no evidence that pollutants occur in the cabin air at levels exceeding available health and safety standards”.
A CAA spokesman said the report was “nothing that passengers or crew should be overly concerned about”.