Injured On An Airplane?

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Reprinted and written by: The Scavenger

Passengers getting off airline flights often experience ‘jet lag’ which is clearly due to changing time zones but many may also experience long-term serious ill health after certain ‘fume event’ flights but will never understand the simple cause. Captain John Hoyte explains the phenomenon known as ‘Aerotoxic Syndrome’.

 Three scientists from North America, France and Australia termed this neurological illness ‘Aerotoxic Syndrome’ in 1999 but passengers are mostly still unaware that it is caused by breathing toxic cabin air in-flight. 

As an airline pilot, I experienced serious neurological problems in 1990 after I started to fly the BAe 146 four-engined jet on ‘night freight flying’. It left me with Alzheimer’s-type symptoms of chronic fatigue, failing memory, slurred / incoherent speech, poor thought-processing, vision disturbances and countless other mysterious symptoms – not desirable when flying airliners. 

I was a very fit young man and I carried on flying. As there are always two pilots in a modern jet I was able to mask it by using checklists and other coping devices, so keeping it quiet out of fear of losing my job. 

By 1998 I had become certain that the ‘night’ aspect of my flying was responsible, so I logically transferred to day time passenger flying. 

Initially I felt better but would still be troubled by the same symptoms which left me exhausted and feeling intoxicated all of the time. However, I had long since restricted my alcohol intake, as it would quickly send me ‘over the top’. 

By 2004/5 and aged 50 I was ready to stop flying as my memory was failing and I felt as though I was going to kill not only myself, but take around 100 passengers and crew with me. 

In mid 2005 I had to suddenly stop flying, confused, sick and exhausted. In early 2006 I was grounded with ‘chronic stress’ by expert aviation doctors. A matter of months later I was tested along with 26 other BALPA union pilots and found out we all had highly abnormal blood / fat results but more importantly, measurable sub-normal memories and cognitive dysfunction. 

How could jet engine oil be found in my blood and fat? Might it be responsible for the ill health I had learnt to live with but had wrecked my life? 

One essential fact is that aircrew, pilots and cabin crew breathe the same air as their passengers. This includes royalty, low cost passengers, politicians and even doctors. 

Engine oil and OPs 

How might the engine oil have got into my body? 

In the early years of jet flying, the Boeing 707 for example had mechanically compressed air pumped into the confines of the fuselage to create the pressure and oxygen content necessary to sustain life at high altitude of jet flying. 

But in around 1963 Boeing design engineers discovered that they could use the excess compressed air from a jet engine, taken off the engine prior to the fuel being mixed. This air is called ‘bleed air’ as it is bled off the engine. It is piped, unfiltered into the passenger cabin and is done so to this day. 

The engineers of the day warned that if the bleed air should mix with the oil in the engine, it would convey not pure outside air, but an oil / air mixture into the passenger compartment. 

Unsurprisingly, the risk was thought negligible and the accountants won the day; it was clearly a simpler system and saved money, yet had an obvious flaw. 

In each jet engine seals keep the air and oil apart. 

However, what aircraft manufacturers will not tell you is that the oil seals wear out, allowing the oil and air to mix. 

Another fact is that jet engine oil is a highly toxic mixture of chemicals but perhaps the most worrying chemical added is 3 – 5 % Tricresyl phosphate or TCP, which is an organophosphate (OP). It is added both to make the engine last longer and as a flame retardant. 

OPs date back a hundred years but the Nazis developed them extensively as nerve agents in the 1930s with the intention of damaging the human nervous system. 

Many will remember the UK sheep farmers of the 1980s and 1990s who were forced by the government to dip their sheep in OPs but then found that many of the farmers developed sudden mysterious neurological ill health and suicides. 

Typical symptoms of OP poisoning are chronic fatigue, sweating, speech difficulties, confusion, depression, respiratory and digestive problems. Even worse, personality and character changes also result from prolonged exposures. In fact, as the OPs affect the central nervous system, all of the body’s major systems are affected, including the brain. 

The main route of poisoning is by inhalation. Occasionally oil fumes find their way into the cabin and are reported as ‘vomit’, ‘wet dog’ or ‘inside of trainers’ smells. If a whiff of fumes is smelt, no lasting damage should arise, but anybody being repeatedly exposed to the fumes or for many hours should definitely worry for their health. 

Often there is a ‘fume event flight’ where visible oil fumes can be seen in the cabin. There are no chemical detectors on board, so it is up to the aircrew to detect the fumes with their noses and to deal with it by isolating the faulty bleed air line. 

Most people will know the dangers of tobacco smoking and that breathing smoke fumes is harmful. The doctors also have a good understanding of the damage done by tobacco smoking and it was as recently as the 1950s that the Government actively supported smoking as being ‘healthy’. 

Compare this to the situation in a fume event in an airliner. 

There is no official risk, no acknowledgement of the ill health caused but total denial of the long-term effects. 

Many aircrew have lost their flying medicals over the past 40 years; the official numbers are deliberately kept low whilst aviation doctors who are paid by the airlines, prefer to turn a blind eye to the cause and are possibly better at wealth than health. 

Meanwhile neurological illnesses such as Chronic Fatigue Syndrome (CFS), Parkinson’s, Alzheimer’s, Motor neurone disease (MND) and Multiple Sclerosis (MS) are increasingly found worldwide but researchers state that they ‘do not know the causes’ despite millions of dollars of research. 

As I suddenly found myself out of work in 2006, I began the process of finding out the reason. 

More victims 

It wasn’t long before I realised that there were many other victims like me around the world. 

There would never be two people with exactly the same symptoms as everybody has different genes and has had different exposures.

 The Aerotoxic Association was launched at the Houses of Parliament in June 2007 and has since built up a large network of victims all over the world.

In 2007 government research agreed that short-term ill health could be possible but ‘more research’ was needed to find out if repeated exposures could lead to chronic ill health. 

That long-term research is coming to an end now and it is expected that in March 2010 Cranfield University, who have been commissioned by the UK government to do the research, will be in a position to confirm the exact content and concentration of visible oil fumes. 

Perhaps when the truth is known, innocent aircrew and passengers will be able to make the link between their ill health and flying. But it is highly likely that yet more research will be called for. 

Many suspect that the airlines and governments are keen to cover up this issue as it defines a basic design flaw in all jet-powered bleed air aircraft, including most turboprops, where a jet engine drives a propeller. 

Interestingly, Boeing’s latest airliner, the Boeing 787 Dreamliner (which flew for the first time in December 2009) does not use bleed air any more for air conditioning. The designers have reverted back to using electrically-driven compressors supplying outside air. Only a passing mention is made of a ‘more comfortable passenger experience’ and ‘fuel efficiency’ is emphasised, which non-technical passengers can relate to, perhaps more easily. 

Passengers may believe that the ‘drop-down’ emergency oxygen masks are for use during a fume event, when the air can suddenly change colour. The pilots only deploy this system when a ‘decompression’ occurs, when the cabin pressure is lost; never because of air quality. The reason behind this is that the oxygen is mixed with ambient air, which is already contaminated. 

Some passengers have recently resorted to carrying their own simple activated carbon filter face masks as a ‘better than nothing’ health and safety measure. Whilst others seem happy to put their trust in a flawed design system which experts say goes wrong once in every 100 flights and some pilots suggest happens on most flights, to some extent. 

So passengers are reliant on the noses of the flight crew and all too often, as I can testify, they have no idea of the possible harmful effects of toxic air. Young pilots and cabin crew are still blissfully unaware of any danger when they start flying and no risk is said to be present by the regulators, who are directly funded by the airlines. 

Pilots are positive, logical people and whilst we can easily identify the problem we are also keen to have known technical solutions introduced, on the precautionary principle: 

• Filtering the bleed air is not being done due to ‘cost’ – surely most passengers would agree to pay a little more for clean air?
• Less toxic oil is available - why take a chance with known poisons?
• Toxic air detectors are available – why rely on a pilot’s sense of smell?

There are many recorded instances of passengers being affected by a single fume event flight and where they are still ill, years later. As many passengers never meet again after a fume event flight they will be told by the airline that “They are the only ones to complain……” and any follow up is quickly squashed and lost in meaningless paperwork trail. 

The worst effects of OP poisoning can arise several days after the flight, again confusing doctors into misdiagnosing depression or a virus with the subsequent mistreatments. 

UCL (University College London) suggested in 2006 that 196,000 UK passengers are exposed per year, that’s about 500 per day. 

‘Failing safe’ 

Perhaps the group of people most affected are aircrew who regularly breathe these fumes but are told it’s normal and not a danger. Many leave the job early, often going part-time before “failing safe” with mysterious, supposedly undiagnosable symptoms. 

It is known that some aircrew have not ‘failed safe’ but have, due to their serious neurological problems of failing memory and thought processing, made a poor judgment and paid the ultimate price. There has never been an officially-recorded accident due to Aerotoxic Syndrome but equally Aerotoxic Syndrome is still hotly disputed, ten years after it was first identified. 

A high profile, celebrity exposure might be all that it takes to bring in rapid, long overdue changes. 

Aircrew often talk of being in a ‘vegetable-like state’, ’zombies’ or ‘permanently intoxicated’.

As they breathe the same air as passengers it shouldn’t be too surprising when frequent flyers develop the same symptoms – the fact that few people have made the link after 45 years is perhaps a measure of how difficult it is to work it out, when people are denied the above information and are sick. 

Perhaps the worst aspect of Aerotoxic Syndrome is that there are many innocent people, including young children, who have suffered the dire effects of a fume event but will never make the link to the cause of their long-term serious ill health. 

This will hopefully change in the next few months as the media begin to understand a subject and start an open, balanced public discussion which should lead to the known technical fixes being introduced – one day. 

Captain John Hoyte, a former commercial airline pilot and BAe 146 Training Captain, is Chairman of the Aerotoxic Association, a support group for sufferers of Aerotoxic Syndrome. Its website contains detailed information on the syndrome as well as news and articles, reports and evidence, testimonies from victims and more details of Captain Hoyte’s story.

http://www.thescavenger.net/health/aerotoxic-syndrome-1234.html

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Reprinted from and written by: DutchNews.nl

The FNV general workers union has called on the transport and social affairs ministries to launch a far-reaching investigation into smoke and smell problems on board Fokker-100 planes.

TV show Zembla reported on Sunday night that last December KLM Cityhopper planes were twice hit by such severe problems that the pilots were forced to use oxygen masks.

The programme said it is ‘extremely likely’ the problem is due to toxic chemicals entering the air conditioning system following an oil leak.

The transport ministry has confirmed both incidents, Zembla said.

Oil leak?

KLM refused to comment in depth on the reports but said it is taking the incidents seriously.

Union official Leen van der List said he wanted to know what the health risks are to crew and passengers and what action is being taken to stop the leaks.

For Original follow this link:

http://www.dutchnews.nl/news/archives/2010/02/union_wants_action_on_airplane.php

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Reprinted from: LosAngelesTimes.com

Written by: Robert J. Lopez

A Southwest Airlines flight heading to Burbank was on a brief collision course with a small private aircraft Saturday afternoon and had to execute an evasive maneuver, causing injuries to two flight attendants, according to preliminary information from the Federal Aviation Administration.

Southwest Flight 2534, with 85 people on board, was flying at about 6,000 feet and was 20 miles out of Bob Hope Airport about 12:45 p.m when an alert sounded in the cockpit, warning that the Boeing 737 was on a collision course with other aircraft, according to FAA spokesman Ian Gregor.

The Southwest pilot made an emergency descent and then climbed, causing one of the attendants to break a shoulder, Gregor said. The flight landed at Bob Hope without incident.

Officials from the FAA and National Transportation Safety Board are investigating the incident.

[Updated at 5:45 p.m.: A Southwest spokeswoman said the flight departed from Las Vegas with 80 passengers and that the two employees were treated for their injuries and released.]

http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/lanow/2010/02/southwest-near-collission.html

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Reprinted from: The Washington Post

Written by: The Associated Press

GROVELAND, Calif. — A small plane crashed in flames in the backyard of a home in rural northern California Friday night, killing the two people aboard but causing no injuries on the ground, authorities said.

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Reprinted from: msnbc.com

Written by: The Associated Press

TOKYO - About 20 people have been injured by turbulence aboard a United Airlines plane flying from Washington, D.C., to Japan.

Tetsuya Shinozuka, a police official at Tokyo’s Narita International Airport, says many of the injuries were bruises, but at least one person may have broken a leg. He gave no further details.

United Airlines spokesman Mike Trevino in Chicago says about halfway into the 13-hour flight, the pilot advised passengers to put on their seat belts. A short time later, the plane “experienced moderate turbulence.”

He declined to discuss any injuries but says United is cooperating with health officials.

The Boeing 747 with 263 people on board landed on schedule Saturday in Tokyo.

For Original article: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/35519456/ns/travel-news/

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Reprinted and Written by: USA Today

Tetsuya Shinozuka, a police official at Tokyo’s Narita International Airport, says many of the injuries were bruises, but at least one person may have fractured a leg. He gave no further details.

He said the Boeing 747 was flying from Washington, D.C., to Tokyo with 263 people on board when it encountered turbulence over Alaska.

The plane landed on schedule Saturday in Tokyo.

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Reprinted from: The Seattle Times

Written by: Joan Lowry

WASHINGTON — Fewer airliners crashed around the world last year, but more people died in the accidents, an industry group said Thursday.

The number of deaths rose to 685 from 502 the previous year, the International Air Transport Association said. Yet the number of deadly accidents dropped to 18 from 23 the year before, a major accident rate that was the second-lowest on record, the association said.

The good news is that the accident rate is half of what it was in the 1990s, a safety expert said. Better warning systems help keep pilots from flying planes into the ground and help them turn to avoid midair collisions, said Jim Burin, director of technical programs at the Flight Safety Foundation.

The bad news is that the accident rate improved mainly in the first half of the last decade, Burin said.

“The last half we basically haven’t improved at all,” he said. “It’s been pretty static.”

Three accidents accounted for most of the deaths:

• Air France Flight 447 disappeared over the Atlantic Ocean en route from Brazil to France with 228 people aboard on June 1. (French authorities announced Wednesday that they will begin a new $13 million search for the remains of the Airbus A330.)

• A Yemenia Airways Airbus A310 crashed into the Indian Ocean off the Comoros Islands on June 30, killing 152 people on board. A 12-year-old girl clinging to debris survived.

• A Russian-made jetliner bound for Armenia crashed in northwest Iran shortly after taking off from Tehran on July 15. All 168 people on board were killed.

The annual number of deaths has fluctuated over the past decade, peaking in 2005 at 1,035, the association said.

The major accident rate for 2009 — 0.7 accidents per million flights — was the second lowest ever and is more than a third lower than the rate 10 years ago, the association said. The rate is based on Western-built jets destroyed, substantially damaged or written off as losses by air carriers.

Burin, whose aviation safety organization is based in Alexandria, Va., said pilots flying planes into the ground were once the top cause of airline crashes, but those kinds of accidents have been all but eliminated by better warning systems. Another improvement was replacement of many cockpit gauges with computer screens that are easier for pilots to read and give them quicker to access more information, Burin said.

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/travel/2011117313_webairlinecrashes18.html

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Reprinted from: The New York Times

Written by: By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS WRITERES

LOS ANGELES (AP) — Kevin Smith says he’s ”way fat,” but that shouldn’t stop him from flying.

The director and actor says a pilot ejected him from a Southwest Airlines flight from Oakland to Burbank, Calif., saying he didn’t fit properly in a single seat.

Smith raised a stink about the incident on his Twitter page Sunday, saying ”I’m way fat, but I’m not there just yet,” and ”If you look like me, you may be ejected from Southwest Air.”

He posted a picture of himself sitting on the plane with his cheeks puffed out.

Southwest says it ”Customer of Size” policy require travelers must be able to fit safely and comfortably in one seat or make other arrangements.

After a storm of angry online comments from Smith and his fans, the airline issued an apology first from its own Twitter account and later in a statement on its Web site titled ”Not So Silent Bob,” a jovial jab at the Silent Bob character Smith plays in many of his films.

”We would like to echo our tweets and again offer our heartfelt apologies to you,” the statement said.

The airline said it also accommodated Smith on a later flight, gave him a $100 voucher and apologized by phone.

Both Smith and the airline acknowledged that he had bought two seats for his original flight from Oakland, where he had spoken at the Macworld Expo conference.

But he was flying standby in order to catch an earlier flight, and only one was available.

Smith insisted that he was still able to put both armrests down and buckle his seat belt, which is Southwest’s standard.

Smith is the director of the new Bruce Willis movie ”Cop Out,” and previously directed the films ”Clerks” and ”Chasing Amy.”

Follow link for original article:

http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2010/02/15/arts/AP-US-People-Kevin-Smith.html?_r=2&scp=3&sq=

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Reprinted from: NBC.com

Written by: Brian Thompson

Evidence that a part of a Cessna 337 that fell off the plane before it crashed Monday at Monmouth Executive Airport suggest the possibility of a bird strike — as the names of those killed were released.

Five people, including a father, his son and nephew, died in the crash. They have been identified as Andrzej Zajaczkowski, 38, his son Patryk Zajaczkowski, 14, and nephew Filip Zajaczkowski, 6, as well as pilot Wojciech Nykaza, 46, of Lodi, NJ, and owner of the plane Jacek Mazurek, 45, of Kearny, NJ.

Mazurek was a friend of the Zajackowski family.

Meanwhile, one experienced pilot familiar with the area believes that birds may be to blame for the crash.

“I fly in and out of this airport quite frequently — birds are an issue,” said pilot Peter DeLisa.

DeLisa said a picture of the part lying on the runway appears to come from a wingtip of the doomed plane, and the NTSB admits witnesses saw something come off.

“Something flew off, separated the aircraft as it was flying over,” said NTSB investigator Jose Obregon.

“Airplanes are made to fly with all their parts,” said DeLisa, explaining that with the wing tip gone, “It changes the whole aerodynamic structure of the aircraft as well as the weight and the balance and the aircraft becomes uncontrollable.”

DeLisa said he talked to several people at the airport when the crash occurred, and they told him the pilot had gone up for a picture-taking opportunity with another family member in a small helicopter nearby taking the pictures.

The NTSB would not confirm that, but Obregon did say the plane had taken off from the airport located in Wall, NJ and had made one pass around the property when the tragedy occurred.

DeLisa said if the plane had been flying slower, several of those on board, or all, may have survived.

But there was a huge debris field several hundred feet away from the part that landed on the runway.

DeLisa said that told him “He was at the top end of his speed range and that’s what caused a large scattering of debris and made it so difficult for officials to recover the remains.”

DeLisa added that something other than a bird strike may have happened to cause the wing tip to fall off. NTSB investigators take great pains not to leap to conclusions until they’ve had a chance to study all the evidence, and Obregon admitted their probe could last anywhere from six months to a year and a half.

Follow the below link for orginal:

http://www.nbcnewyork.com/news/local-beat/Plane-Crash-That-Killed-5-May-Have-Been-a-Bird-Strike-84496892.html

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Reprinted from: Seattle PI

Written by: Brooke Donald and Sughin Thanawala, ASSOCIATED PRESS WRITER

EAST PALO ALTO, Calif. — A small plane crashed Wednesday in a residential neighborhood shrouded in heavy fog, killing all three aboard, igniting fires and scattering debris onto a house where a children’s day care center operated, authorities said. There were no reports of injury on the ground, and fires caused by the crash were soon extinguished.

The Cessna 310 crashed around 7:55 a.m. shortly after takeoff from the Palo Alto Airport, according to the Federal Aviation Administration. The crash site is one mile northwest of the airport.

Identities of the victims aboard the aircraft were not immediately known.

Menlo Park Fire Chief Harold Schapelhouman said the plane either struck a 100-foot electrical tower or clipped its power transmission lines and broke apart, sending debris raining down on the working-class Silicon Valley neighborhood.

A wing fell onto one house, where the children’s day care operated, and the rest of the plane struck the front retaining wall of another house down the street before landing onto two vehicles on the street, Schapelhouman said. Debris also struck two neighboring houses, he said.

The occupants of the homes have been accounted for, although authorities can’t be sure of the fatality count until crews begin clearing the wreckage, Schapelhouman said.

“Either by luck or the skill of the pilot, the plane hit the street and not the homes on either side,” he added. “That saved people in this community.”

Kate McClellan, 57, said she was walking her dog when she saw a plane descend from the foggy sky and strike the tower, causing power lines to swing wildly in the air.

“It burst into flames, and then it kept flying for bit before it hit some houses and exploded,” McClellan said.

Pamela Houston, an employee of the day care in the house struck by the wing, said she was feeding an infant when she heard a loud boom that she initially thought was an earthquake until she “saw a big ball of fire hit the side of the house.”

Houston said she screamed to the others in the house - the owner, the owner’s husband and their three children - and the group safely escaped before the home went up in flames.

“There are not even words to describe what it felt like,” she said. “I am very thankful to God that he allowed us to get out.”

The plane is registered to Air Unique Inc. No one answered the phone number listed for the Santa Clara company Wednesday morning. The plane was headed to the Hawthorne Municipal Airport in Southern California, the FAA said.

Calls to the Palo Alto Airport also were not immediately returned.

The city of Palo Alto, which provides power through a municipal utility agency, said most of the city and surrounding area had lost power due to Wednesday’s plane crash. Lucile Packard Children’s Hospital and Stanford Hospital both were operating on backup generators and canceled elective surgeries for the day, according to hospitals spokesman Robert Dicks.

“We have multiple crews on scene investigating,” said Joe Molica, a spokesman for Pacific Gas & Electric, which owns the transmission lines used by the city. “The crash appears to have affected three transmission lines that serve the city of Palo Alto’s municipal utility.”

Follow link:

http://www.seattlepi.com/national/1110ap_us_plane_hits_house.html