The Airliner Cabin Environment Air Quality and Safety (1986) / Chapter Skim
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Introduction
Introduction
Pages 13-23
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From page 13... ...
Concern for the quality of air in the passenger cabins of commercial airliners has been publicized, but it has focused on occupational exposures of cabin crews. Rising fuel costs might have prompted airlines to reduce the amount of outside air in the ventilation of passenger cabins to conserve fuel, consequently adversely affecting the air quality.
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From page 14... ...
It in therefore important to understand the potential for adverse health effects of chronic exposure to airliner cabin air. Onboard fires are a special condition of cabin air quality that is the basis of additional concern because they produce large quantities of smoke and toxic fumes.
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From page 15... ...
PROBLEMS IN STUDYING AIRLINER CABIN AIR QUALITY The Committee faced two fundamental and related problems in its attempt to assess exposure to pollutants in airliner cabins: although their presence is known or suspected, very few data are available on the concentrations of pollutants of interest; and National Research Council committees do not generally conduct basic research and gather their own primary data, but rather rely on the available, published, peer-reviewed literature. Thin Committee explored the idea of
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From page 16... ...
Instead, individual manufacturers set performance requirements for airliner environmental control systems; as a result, design and performance can vary among different models of aircraft. If a system fails, emergency "standard operating procedures" -- some net by government regulation and some by individual airlines -- govern the operation of backup systems and in-flight procedures for ventilation and air quality.
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From page 17... ...
, or 30,000 ppm, in considered hazardous in the case of crew members, 7 but may be allowed in crew compartments if appropriate protective breathing equipment is available. As to relative humidity and low pressure, the Committee relied on reports from the toxicologic, clinical, and epidemiologic literature and estimated health effects associated with combinations of humidity, pressurization, and pollutant exposures.
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From page 19... ...
The most commonly noticeable differences in passenger air quality are associated with locations in or near designated smoking zones and with the density of such smoking zones in a given area. Because of aircraft cabin airflow patterns, there can be significant differences in the exposure of passengers seated toward the tail, in the middle, near the lavatories and galleys, and in the forward compartments of large aircraft.
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From page 20... ...
PROBLEMS IN STUDYING THE HEALTH EFFECTS ASSOCIATED WITH AIRLINER CABIN AIR QUALITY Data relevant to the health effects of airliner cabin air quality can be considered in several ways, for example, by types of persons exposed, by acute and chronic health outcomes of concern, and by source and type of data. Each implies tradeoffs.
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From page 21... ...
Biases resulting from the expectation of compensation for occupation-related illness must also be considered. None of the studies of health effects found by the Committee satisfied these criteria of reliability.
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From page 22... ...
This reporting will provide a unique aid to epidemiologic surveys of events possibly related to cabin air quality (see Chapter 7~. The seemingly unrelated problem of evacuation time and instructions in the case of fire was considered by the Committee to be within its charge, because death from smoke inhalation occurs almost every year in airplanes and is a most poignant example of the effects of airliner cabin air pollution (see Chapter 4~.
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From page 23... ...
4. National primary and secondary ambient air quality standards.
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