Sickness warning over toxic fumes on aeroplanes

Dr Susan Michaelis, who flew for a regional division of Qantas in Australia before stopping due to medical reasons, believes she became ill because of exposure to toxic fumes.

Dr Michaelis, who has completed a PhD on the subject, said: “It’s one of the biggest issues that the aviation industry has faced in a long time. It’s about the air people breathe in aircraft and whether it’s safe or not. If you are not breathing safe air there’s a very big problem.”

But a spokesman for the British Airline Pilots Association (Balpa) said that most UK pilots do not see fume leaks as a common problem.

He said: “The whole issue of toxic air in cabins is controversial. Some pilots believe it is a widespread problem, but the bulk of pilots don’t believe that.”

However, as “one incident would be one too many”, he said Balpa had encouraged the Government to carry out research into cabin air quality.

The Department for Transport has commissioned a study by Cranfield University that is due to be published “very shortly”.

Since 2006 there have been seven incidents involving toxic fumes reported to the Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) and one to Balpa. These are where it is proved that a toxic substance had leaked somewhere on an aircraft.

There were 270 engine oil incidents recorded by the CAA, where oil had leaked and fumes had entered the cabin.

The Balpa spokesman explained this is because air goes through the engine and into the cabin.

But he said that the next generation of aircraft will not use this system. The new Boeing 787 Dreamliner draws air straight into the cabin so it does not have to pass through the engine.

Dr Michaelis believes that warning systems should be installed in the cockpits of aeroplanes to detect fumes. She claims that substances including oil additive tricresyl phosphate leak into the cabin and cause short and long-term health problems for crew and passengers, including respiratory conditions.

She said: “If you’ve been on an aircraft and smelled that funny odour it’s recognised that’s generally oil fumes. The passengers wouldn’t know. You wouldn’t know and if you were to get sick, it may not be related, but you wouldn’t know.

“People are getting sick. There are people getting sick and they are getting seriously sick.”

A Department for Transport spokesman said: “We take the health of passengers extremely seriously which is why we commissioned groundbreaking research to, for the first time, establish exactly what is in cabin air. This work is now complete and is currently being peer reviewed before publication in the near future.

“Cabin fume events are exceptionally rare, occurring on a tiny fraction of flights, and the results of this research will help us decide what action – if any – is necessary.”