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Travel through any major international airport in Europe or the Far East today and chances are that a fair number of passengers in the terminals and at the check-in desks will be sporting surgical masks. Board a flight and most of the masks eventually will be removed – an example of comfort winning over the fear of contracting severe acute respiratory syndrome, or SARS.
For supercautious travelers determined to help resist SARS, the removal of masks once on board their flights may well be imprudent. For despite improvements in cabin air quality during the last decade there still are major questions about the effectiveness of sophisticated air-cleaning systems meant to screen out or otherwise destroy spores, bacteria and viruses on aircraft.
Privately, pilots working for major airlines tell Insight they remain worried about cabin air quality despite the public claims made by their employers that flying is safe and passengers shouldn’t fear catching SARS or any other virus for that matter. Some of their anxieties focus not on the newer air-cleaning technology itself, in which they voice general confidence, but on the airlines’ reluctance to examine, dismantle and clean regularly the high-efficiency particulate air filters themselves.
Says a senior Alitalia pilot, “The problem is that none of the airlines want to ground a plane for the half-a-day it takes to clean the air systems. A grounded aircraft is losing revenue for the company, so weeks pass before the systems are dismantled and checked. Generally, it is done when the aircraft has to be grounded anyway for other major repairs.”
A United Airlines pilot agrees, saying he believes the filter systems should be cleaned after a couple of long-haul flights, depending on how full the planes are. “The filters get real dirty, and most manufacturers recommend regular cleaning,” he says, “but from my experience it can be several flights, sometimes a dozen or more, before the cleaning system is stripped down.”
Neither pilot, like several others with whom Insight spoke about this problem, was willing to go on the record but both spoke on the condition of anonymity.
SARS has put air quality front and center again as an issue for passengers and flight crews alike. In April, Rep. Peter DeFazio, D-Ore., ranking Democrat on the House Transportation and Infrastructure subcommittee on Aviation, asked the General Accounting Office, or GAO, to study the effects of cabin air quality on airline passengers in light of the emergence and spread of SARS.
A key mover of legislation approved by Congress in 1988 and 1989 to ban smoking on domestic flights, DeFazio has written to GAO Comptroller General David Walker requesting an investigation. He notes that air quality in the cabins of commercial airliners has been an ongoing concern for the traveling public for some time. And he emphasizes that “concerns range from general discomfort (e.g., dry eyes, scratchy throats and nasal irritation) and the development of colds after air travel, to more serious concerns about the transmission of disease by other passengers. Concerns about the transmission of disease have been highlighted most recently by the spread of SARS – from its origin in Asia to other continents via air travel.”
Major U.S. and foreign carriers long have been prickly about criticism of cabin air quality, claiming there is very little risk of infectious disease being transmitted aboard passenger aircraft. They say studies of cabin air quality have not demonstrated a significant health hazard for either passengers or crew and that when compared with the air circulating in homes or office buildings the air quality in passenger jets often is superior.
This issue has been around since the early 1980s, when the carriers set out to increase fuel efficiency by introducing ventilation systems that recirculated cabin air. While older systems had used only fresh air – compressed, humidified and cooled by the engines – the new systems allow airlines to recirculate as much as 50 percent of cabin air, thereby decreasing workload demands on the engines and reducing the fuel needed to clean the cabin air.
Since then passenger and air-crew complaints about air quality and the contraction of colds and other respiratory illnesses have increased. The airlines have pointed to several studies to back up their claims that all is well with carrier air purity, including a 1999 study undertaken by scientists at the University of California at San Francisco and published in the Journal of the American Medical Association. That study involved more than 1,000 passengers flying between the San Francisco Bay area and Denver during the winter and early spring of 1999. About 19 percent of passengers on planes with recirculated cabin air reported colds a week after their flights. In comparison, 21 percent who flew in planes using only fresh air reported colds.
According to Jessica Nutik Zitter, an assistant clinical professor of medicine at the university and one of the authors of the study, the findings were a surprise. “We were expecting to see an increase in URIs [upper respiratory infections] among passengers traveling on commercial flights that used recirculated air ventilation,” she said at the time. Another report cited frequently by the airlines is one issued by the American Medical Association in 1998 and based on several studies conducted by Consolidated Safety Services and the U.S. Department of Transportation. The report found that levels of bacteria and fungi on airplanes were lower than those found in public buildings.
Russell Rayman, secretary-treasurer of the Aerospace Medical Association, also has supported the airline industry by arguing that air purity isn’t a problem. “The transmission of contagious diseases like URIs is a problem of person-to-person contact,” he says. “This kind of contact occurs in an enclosed space. I do not believe the ventilation system is the cause of the transmission. It is caused by proximity, and that can happen anywhere.”
But the published reports so far have not satisfied U.S. lawmakers or parliamentary bodies overseas. An investigation by a science and technology committee of the British House of Lords concluded in 2000 that there was a worrying lack of research and in-flight testing of cabin air quality. Nor have the reports satisfied the National Academy of Sciences, which in 2001 warned in its own study that the air quality aboard jetliners can be hazardous to passenger health. “Available exposure information suggests that environmental factors, including air contaminants, can be responsible for some of the numerous complaints of acute and chronic health effects in cabin crew and passengers,” the academy’s National Research Council cautioned.
Other experts, including the U.K. consumer magazine Holiday Which?, argue that despite the assurances of the airlines, cabin air is a potential health hazard. Holiday Which? complained that pilots reduce airflow rates in the cabin to save fuel and criticized the lack of international regulations about the minimum rate of ventilation for passengers. It pointed out also that there is no agreed international definition of “good” air quality nor are there any rules governing cabin humidity or temperature, which could be crucial in controlling the spread of bacteria or viruses.
Airline pilots interviewed by Insight emphasize, too, that there are no regulations governing the minimum standards for air filters or rules requiring air-cleaning systems to be checked regularly. “None of the aviation authorities, neither [Britain’s] Civil Aviation Authority nor the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration nor the regional bodies in Europe and Asia, impose air-filter regulations,” a European pilot says. “And they should.” An engineer at a respected manufacturer of air-filter systems confirms that lack of frequent cleaning well could undermine their effectiveness and ability to screen out bacteria and viruses.
As far as airline spokesmen are concerned the latest hue and cry about cabin air quality is misguided, media inspired and all linked to panic over SARS. They argue the SARS epidemic should be kept in perspective, considering that there have been only 6,700 cases reported worldwide and that only a handful of contractions have been linked to air travel.
William Gaillard, director of corporate communications for the International Air Transport Association in Geneva, points out in comparison that an estimated 100 million passengers fly each month. He argues that the SARS epidemic has been a success story and praises the international aviation business for increased airport screening, providing optional surgical masks on some airlines and delivering plenty of filtered cabin air.
And U.S. carriers are bullish, too. “American Airlines controls the air in its passenger cabins to keep customers as comfortable as possible and focuses on air purity through the filtration of recirculated air,” a spokesman says. Curiously, however, the carriers claim to have no available statistics concerning how often the air-filter systems are dismantled for cleaning, and they are shy about discussing it.
Jamie Dettmer is a senior editor for Insight.
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