Back to Annual Meeting Page		American Public Health Association 133rd Annual Meeting & Exposition December 10-14, 2005 Philadelphia, PA

Abstract #102754

Jim Cone, MD, MPH, Environmental and Occupational Disease Epidemiology, Dept of Health and Mental Hygiene New York City, 253 Broadway, Room 602, CN 34-C, New York, NY 10007, 212-676-6346, jcone@health.nyc.gov

Aircraft cabins are a uniquely challenging environment. Aircraft cabins have the smallest available airspace per person of any current social environment, and occupants of a fully loaded aircraft typically have about 35–70 ft3 (1–2 m3) of available airspace per person, approximately 1/10th that of a typical office worker or a spectator in an auditorium. Aircraft cabin air quality issues were summarized recently by a U.S. National Academy of Sciences Committee. Ventilation of aircraft requires control measures that are seldom of concern for occupied space at ground level. The principal of these are the need to compensate for the substantial difference between cabin and outside pressures, the much lower available space per occupant in aircraft cabins, and the need for coping with more extreme external temperatures than are common at ground level. Existing ground level air quality standard-setting agencies including FAA, OSHA, EPA, ACGIH, ASHRAE, as well as US Navy and NASA will be evaluated for their strengths and weaknesses in potentially setting aircraft air quality standards. Types of possible contaminants, and the limits which have been set by several of these agencies for many of these potential contaminants will be discussed. In addition recent measured aircraft cabin concentrations of key cabin air contaminants are discussed. Previous history of the development of the small number of existing FAA air quality standards, and particularly the experience of regulating tobacco smoking in cabins will be discussed. Recommendations for development of future air quality standards aboard aircraft will be presented.

Learning Objectives:

• Attendees will learn about the current air quality hazards experienced by flight crews and passengers aboard commercial aircraft
• Attendees will understand the range of ground-level air quality standards that might serve as a starting point for aircraft air quality standards, and some of the obstacles to development of such standards

Keywords: Air Quality, Standards

Presenting author's disclosure statement:

I wish to disclose that I have NO financial interests or other relationship with the manufactures of commercial products, suppliers of commercial services or commercial supporters.