Engineering news
Toxic fumes in plane cabins pose a risk of health damage to aircrew and frequent fliers, a coroner has warned.
Sheriff Stanhope Payne, the senior coroner for Dorset, said those regularly exposed to such fumes faced "consequential damage to their health".
His comments were made in a Regulation 28 report, to prevent further deaths, following initial investigations into the death of a co-pilot.
Richard Westgate, a co-pilot for British Airways, died in December 2012 believing he had been poisoned by repeated exposure to contaminated cabin air.
It is common practice for airlines to use warm, compressed air taken directly from aircraft engines to pressurise the cabin. This air is known as 'bleed air' and is known to become contaminated with engine oils and hydraulic fluids.
Frank Cannon of Cannons Law Practice, acting on behalf of Westgate's family, said industry had denied that toxic contamination was present 20 years ago. However, after cases of harm emerged, the position became that the contamination was below minimum safety levels, Cannon claimed.
"Minimum safety levels are a fallacy, with no known scientific basis," Cannon said. "Real neurotoxic injury is caused by long-term low-level exposure.
"When monitoring or sample testing has taken place, the actual figures obtained are 'all over the place' with no consistency.”
Sample testing never covers a whole flight, so it is unclear whether the figures obtained represent peaks or troughs of exposure, Cannon added.
"Also very important is the issue of genetic variability between individuals," he said. "Some people have a DNA coding that means they lack the necessary enzymes to detoxify properly or at all.”
The Global Cabin Air Quality Executive (GCAQE) said crew and passengers have been reporting short and long term health effects as a consequence of exposure of contaminated air. It said such events were not rare and were known to be under reported.
Captain Tristan Loraine BCAi, co-chairman of the GCAQE, said: "The only long term safe solution is for all aircraft to be built with the unique bleed free architecture currently flying onboard the Boeing 787.
"The Boeing 787 is the only commercial jet aircraft flying in which crews and passengers can fly knowing the air they breathe will be free of pyrolised and hazardous jet engine oil fumes."
In the report, sent to the chief executive of BA and the chief operating officer of the Civil Aviation Authority, the coroner raised five “matters of concern”, including that “organophosphate compounds are present in aircraft cabin air”; that “the occupants of aircraft cabins are exposed to organophosphate compounds with consequential damage to their health” and that “impairment to the health of those controlling aircraft may lead to the death of occupants”.
He also said there is no real-time monitoring to detect failures in cabin air quality and that no account is taken by airlines of “genetic variation in the human species that would render individuals … intolerant of the exposure”.
A spokeswoman for British Airways said: "We will respond to the coroner in due course. It would be inappropriate to comment further while proceedings are continuing."