Toxic Fumes in Commercial Planes?

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farmrjohn

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farmrjohn
Interesting article in the WSJ. I know F/As that have complained about fumes and smells, often after work on either the bleed air system or air conditioning system. Toxic Fume Article (hopefully not paywalled). And here I thought any neurological issues were from the accumulated results of eating crew meals.
 
OP, given my past experience debating the topic, you're likely to get stonewalled about occupational injury/diseases. Turbine flying has more health hazards than admitted. The dismissal often comes because of choice-supportive-bias support for the compensation in question. That is obviously much more pilot-centering a dynamic than F/As given the pay disparity, but both soft pay and psychic wage are a thing, we're all innocent in shawshank type of thing. At any rate, not only cancers, but neurotoxic injuries are present in flying transport occupations.

The fume events in the main cabin are viewed as a lesser risk due to sheer dilution; pilots historically are the ones who have suffered permanent incapacitation as a population, due to the close quarter. but as the article highlights, it can and does happen to cabin workers too. Trycresyl phosphate is no joke.

As always, exposure frequency x magnitude of the hazard = total risk. Not every occupant will be statistically affected the same way, so caveat emptor. That's why pax, especially the VFR (airline marketing term, not wx) low yearly customers, are statistically insulated from facing such a life incapacitation compared to crews, especially high-block crews. Equipment matters, though it's not widely available. 787 for instance doesn't use bleed air system to condition the cabin, so you are more insulated from the neurotoxic event compared to pos stretch-guppy drivers and some of their french brethren.

Flying less will always be the biggest mitigating factor. I've lost friends to flying ocupational cancer. UPS guy, not even gonna start about the cargo 121 cope when WOCL is brought up. We're just gonna agree to disagree. I'm no hypocrite, thus aware of my own risk factors in my own flying, have worked to mitigate them. I make no moral judgement on people's occupational choices, I just want people to make informed-consented decisions is all, for that is what I'd want for myself and my family.

Lastly, those who know folks who've lost their medicals and life independence to neuropathology not only know how real it is, but how far employers can go to deny the reality of it. As you can predictably read in the article, the immediate and common retort du jour is: "too infrequent for you to draw that conclusion". Spare me. This isn't a jab at civilian employers only ; the military does the exact same thing to us wrt the impact high-power non-ionizing radiation in the formation of thyroid pathologies, cancers and reproductive maladies for such a high-fitness level population compared to gen pop. As my .mil peers will recognize the joke: "VA survey saaaaays.....NOT SERVICE CONNECTED!* :rolleyes:
 
falconkidding said:
Reading our monthly incident reports its overwhelmingly 321s and 220s. Seems to be the GTF engines are more prone but theres a fair amount of ceos as well.
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I've heard the V2500 is particularly problematic, though that was before GTFs really even entered the picture. It would not be surprising if the GTFs were prone since there's more moving parts.
 
I don't see how a pressurized compressor section can draw oil IN. Wouldn't the pressurized air force it OUT? ALso there are only like 4 bearing on the shaft and they are dry sumps. The seal would have to failed completely.

The WSJ article states that its the result of a malfunction, not normal operation. So its not like engines do this all the time on every flight.
 
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What is the risk associated with Turbine flying? Fuel, exhaust?
 
Hengelo said:
What is the risk associated with Turbine flying? Fuel, exhaust?
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The TLDR version is oil or hyd fluid leaks gets into the PACKs which through the magic of compression expansion and witchcraft take 500 degree air and turn it into cold air for cabin. So oil is cooked aerosolized and distributed into the vent blowing right in your face. repeated exposure or a massive one leads to neurological problems up to and including death.
My airline takes it pretty seriously having a whole checklist, report, and form that explains everything to the doctor if you choose to visit one. From the reports i've read the aircraft is downed and mx dives in and troubleshoots.
 
Resurrecting this old thread- as the Spirit bankruptcy led me to read about fume events in general, and on two Spirit flights in particular.
Spirit fume event from 2015
 

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hindsight2020 said:
OP, given my past experience debating the topic, you're likely to get stonewalled about occupational injury/diseases. Turbine flying has more health hazards than admitted. The dismissal often comes because of choice-supportive-bias support for the compensation in question. That is obviously much more pilot-centering a dynamic than F/As given the pay disparity, but both soft pay and psychic wage are a thing, we're all innocent in shawshank type of thing. At any rate, not only cancers, but neurotoxic injuries are present in flying transport occupations.

The fume events in the main cabin are viewed as a lesser risk due to sheer dilution; pilots historically are the ones who have suffered permanent incapacitation as a population, due to the close quarter. but as the article highlights, it can and does happen to cabin workers too. Trycresyl phosphate is no joke.

As always, exposure frequency x magnitude of the hazard = total risk. Not every occupant will be statistically affected the same way, so caveat emptor. That's why pax, especially the VFR (airline marketing term, not wx) low yearly customers, are statistically insulated from facing such a life incapacitation compared to crews, especially high-block crews. Equipment matters, though it's not widely available. 787 for instance doesn't use bleed air system to condition the cabin, so you are more insulated from the neurotoxic event compared to pos stretch-guppy drivers and some of their french brethren.

Flying less will always be the biggest mitigating factor. I've lost friends to flying ocupational cancer. UPS guy, not even gonna start about the cargo 121 cope when WOCL is brought up. We're just gonna agree to disagree. I'm no hypocrite, thus aware of my own risk factors in my own flying, have worked to mitigate them. I make no moral judgement on people's occupational choices, I just want people to make informed-consented decisions is all, for that is what I'd want for myself and my family.

Lastly, those who know folks who've lost their medicals and life independence to neuropathology not only know how real it is, but how far employers can go to deny the reality of it. As you can predictably read in the article, the immediate and common retort du jour is: "too infrequent for you to draw that conclusion". Spare me. This isn't a jab at civilian employers only ; the military does the exact same thing to us wrt the impact high-power non-ionizing radiation in the formation of thyroid pathologies, cancers and reproductive maladies for such a high-fitness level population compared to gen pop. As my .mil peers will recognize the joke: "VA survey saaaaays.....NOT SERVICE CONNECTED!* :rolleyes:
Click to expand...

When will the forum install the word salad translator function?
 
You can copy/paste the salad into the GPT of your choice and tell the model to give you a 30 word summary of key points. Or you can just say "**** it" and move on like the rest of us do. You'll be denigrated as monosyllabic, but you will have done better things with your time.
 
Look at where we are getting service (cabin) air from. It’s nuts to expect clean air from any part of an engine!
It was done that way simply bc it’s easy.

Like all science/aerospace advancements, we’ll have to make the design efforts to come up with a cleaner source of cabin air maybe even for existing jets.

(Didn’t I read the 380 doesn’t use bleed air?)

Even without handling fuel or getting downwind of jet exhaust, people tell me they can ‘smell jet’ on me after a flight, so I know it’s in the cabin.
 
Let'sgoflying! said:
Look at where we are getting service (cabin) air from. It’s nuts to expect clean air from any part of an engine!
It was done that way simply bc it’s easy.
Click to expand...
It comes from the compressor section, prior to combustion. It is almost always clean.

There are failure modes, which can introduce oil or hydraulic fluid into the bleed air, but those are rare. Most often it is exhaust from nearby airplanes on the ramp the induces the jet fuel odor.
 
Has anyone done a chemical analysis of the cabin air and came up with a test report? That would be far more meaningful than randomly talking about smelly air and unidentified hazards.
 
The DC8 didn't use bleed are, though some were later modified to use bleed air and PACKs. You had four Cabin Turbo Compressors, which were spun by bleed air, but compressed fresh outside air. They were located in the nose, forming the corners of the "smiley face". Compressed air proceeded through two stages of heat exchanges, cooled by air from the intakes in the middle of the "smiley face". If needed, it could be further cooled with a Douglas Freon system, basically a freon cycle feeding coils that the air would pass through.

It didn't work great. The CTCs didn't produce high-enough pressure to run a conventional air-cycle machine (PACK). They'd also stall with high load (high cooling) when the engines were reduced to flight-idle at altitude. The Engineer would have to increase the temperature selection, so that more of the air bypassed the cooling heat exchangers, reducing the back pressure on the CTCs.

At top of descent, we'd warn the FE before reducing thrust to idle so he could unload the CTCs to prevent the rumbling from them stalling.

The converted airplanes had the four CTC inputs plugged on the nose but the air intakes in the center were still open.
 
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