WHERE THERE’S SMOKE … ?

Unusually for a writer and particularly for me, I am about to write on a subject about which I have up to now been largely ignorant – or at least woefully confused. It is about the presence of toxic fumes in the cabins of passenger airliners (aero toxicity) and whether they are causing illness, sometimes fatal, particularly amongst pilots, cabin crew and frequent flyers. I am not giving answers, but exploring whether there are questions which seem to have been dismissed out of hand by airlines and air authorities, and which would urgently appear to need answering.

Every month, there is a tense moment of truth in my life when I have to decide about what I am going to write for the next edition of this excellent magazine and I can feel the adrenaline level in my blood rising as I realise that the deadline is hurtling towards me, whilst I still haven’t a clue. It is then that I start searching the Internet at random looking for inspiration.

On this occasion, I happened to be looking for information about an Angel who had appeared on one of my Christmas cards, as one does, when something quite unusual came to light. It was about a website called ‘The Angel Fleet.’ Intrigued, I opened it and soon realised that this was something that badly needed airing.

Toxic fumes in aircraft cabins are nothing new. In some older aircraft such as the dear old De Havilland Dragon Rapide, cabin heat was provided by running outside air over the exhaust pipes from the engines before blowing it into the unpressurised cabin. It worked quite well until the exhaust pipe became rusty and started to leak and engine exhaust gases entered the cabin. Fortunately, piston engine exhaust has a very distinctive smell so that action could be taken rapidly by turning off the cabin air inflow and opening all the windows so that the crew and passengers would not come to any harm except be frostbitten! However, today’s airliners have come a very long way and are now more sophisticated than anyone could have dreamed of way back in the 1940s.

They can now fly in the stratosphere close to the speed of sound and where the Concorde was concerned (R.I.P – sigh) even beyond it. However, the pressure, the temperature and the rate of flow of cabin air at an external altitude of 38,000 feet and an external temperature of -56°C. or thereabouts needed some thought if the passengers were to be kept comfortable and alive! The usually accepted cabin temperature ranges are between 20 and 24°C, whilst the pressure is between 6000 and 8000 feet.

So, how does the external air get into the cabin at a suitable temperature? Simply using the thin outside air, compressing it and warming it up to the cabin temperature would involve the expenditure of a great deal of energy. So – what else is available? The answer? Air from the gas turbine engines in a ‘bleed air’ system, which is bleeding off the hot air from the gas turbine compressors.

These operate at a very high speed and ordinary lubricating oils for their bearings are not adequate for the environment in which they work unless various additives are mixed with them. Theoretically, if all is going as designed, these toxic additives should not be able to get into the airstream heading for the aircraft’s pressurised cabin, but wear and tear can change all that and as the lubrication additives are highly toxic organophosphates (like nerve gas), they could easily cause serious health problems if inhaled by passengers or crew. I mentioned ‘The Angel Fleet’ previously, so let me now introduce the lady who started it. Her name is Dee Passon and she worked as a Cabin Service Director for British Airways until she had to stop flying due to deteriorating health which seemed to be getting steadily worse. Some of our readers may know her as she used to work on BA’s Heathrow/Cape Town flights. Her last flight as an employee of British Airways was in 2008 when she returned to the UK and was placed on sick leave whilst she attempted to restore her previously good health.

She happened to read a newspaper article which used words for the description of a multi- faceted illness called ‘Aerotoxic Syndrome.’ As she read the article, she realised that what she was reading was a description of the debilitating illness from which she had been suffering for about ten years. The newspaper article also gave it a possible cause; this was the inhalation of organophosphates used as additives to turbine engines which had leaked into the cabin air. She took the newspaper article to her doctor, who was employed by BA and he agreed that it sounded very much like the condition that she had been describing to him for the previous ten years.

Her next move was to try and find out how many cabin crews were also suffering from what she had experienced and what she found astonished her. Not only had others suffered from the illness that she had, but the mortality rate, even in young cabin crew members seemed inordinately high.

She then made it her business to go through piles of BA’s weekly ‘BA News’ and compiled a list of cabin crew who had died over

the past 34 months. It turned out that there had been 32 deaths, many of which she knew about and she knew some of the younger cabin crew members. She then wrote to the doctor who she had been visiting telling him about her findings and suggesting that if her figures were accurate, wasn’t this something into which BA should be looking?

She did not get a reply, but she did get a request to attend a meeting with her manager with whom she had always previously been on good terms.

After a brief interview in which she said that her doctor had told her that in another six months, she should be well enough to carry out ground work, the manager’s response was that he was giving her three months’ notice, following which, her contract of employment would be terminated. In short, she was being fired.

She then decided to put her energies into ‘The Angel Fleet’, the original purpose of which was as a memorial to those colleagues who had died. Anyone wishing to read more about Dee and her work can do so by going to www.angelfleet.net/the-angel-fleet story.

I should mention at this stage that I was an aviation medical examiner (AME) working in the UK between 2005 and 2010 and regularly attended the conferences of the Association of Aeromedical Medical Examiners (AAME).

During one of these conferences, a member brought up the matter of possible contamination of cabin air with toxic chemicals. However, he and the other members were reassured by the Chief Medical Officer of a major airline that this was only a rumour for which there was no evidence to back it.

As I knew practically nothing about possible Aerotoxic poisoning at the time, I accepted his word for it, although I do seem to remember an old adage that I learned at medical school ‘Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.’ My next surprise was a radio programme in the BBC’s WorldBusiness Report series entitled ‘Autotoxicity: the hidden dangers of flying.’ This was first broadcast by the BBC only a few weeks ago at the time of my writing this article and was an eye-opener. You can hear it by Googling www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/w172w0q34d6cs2y

So, where are we in connection with ‘Autotoxicity’ and its effects on health? Is there such a thing? Judging by the increasing volume of articles and correspondence about it, it would certainly make one think that there was a problem. However, the more scientifically minded would say that there is little hard scientific data available and to prepare a scientific investigation which would give coherent answers could be expensive.

Therefore one could understand the reluctance of the aviation world to fork out large amounts of money on classical scientific research that could possibly do them a great amount of harm. However, the future may be appearing before our eyes in the form of the Boeing 787 which has been given a very effusive introduction by the Daily Telegraph’s travel supplement ‘Boeing 787 Dreamliner is a breath of cabin air’, which has also highlighted concern about the amount of toxic air in conventional aircraft cabins. It looks as though the elusive cat is now completely out of the bag and it is to be hoped that whilst we are waiting for the new Boeing Dreamliner, a practical and effective way can be found to reduce the damage to health caused by inhaling toxic fumes.