Cabin Air Quality

[Hangar_Rat]

All, I wonder if you could help me with some research that I am conducting relating to cabin air quality in commercial airliners.

Specifically I am interesting in the percieved cabin air quality issues that people have from both the professinal crew point of view and also your experiences of passenger complaints.

Potential Problem Areas

Low Humidity, Low O2, Temperature, Drafts, Stale Air, Odours, Viruses, Bacteria, Low Pressure, Mists, etc.

I will try to reduce the data to form some statistics and then I will communicate these back in a message. All responses will be treated in the strictest confidence.

Many thanks for your help and happy landings to all.

[flapsforty]

Rat, the past few years, a lot has beenw ritten on this site about air quality on board. I think that in addition to any responses you get here, it would be worth your while to do a search on the subject right here on PPRuNe.
...disregard the above if you have already done so... ;)

[Hangar_Rat]

Thanks for your reply. I've been researching this for over a year and agree that there is lots written about it, what I am keen to do is get some raw opinions from crew so that I can draw direct conclusions from. Articles are often muddied (IMHO!) by "official" statments from Airlines and Passenger lobby groups. I've always felt that you need to understand all the elements of something to understand the whole.

[fly babe]

Rat,

I fly nearly everyday and IMHO:
Low Humidity - Causes dry skin and the need to drink plenty of water. We flight attendants recognise this and so ensure we use lots of moisturiser and drink lots of water to combat the dry air.
Low O2 - I sometimes get a little breathless (particularly when bending down to retrieve drinks from the bottom drawer of the drinks cart). I rarely have pax tell me they are suffering any ill effects.
Temperature - Very hard to get right in the cabin! Pax often ask for the heating to be turned up probably because they are stationary for a long while wearing their holiday t-shirts; while we crew turn the heating down since we are mobile and busy!
Drafts - always in the centre of the cabin, and often in the rear galley, even with airvents closed - unsure why?!
Stale Air - only notice this after the a/c has been to bed overnight with the doors closed up.
Odours - shoeless feet, 150+ pax with "morning breath" and armpits! Ive learnt to breathe through my mouth rather than nose!
Viruses/bacteria - I dont even want to think about it!

Generally, the air in the cabin is of a far better quality than most airconditioned offices since it is 'cleaned' before being recycled.

fb

[ChewyTheWookie]

Contaminated bleed air is a controversial topic at the moment as a recent report has suggested that it is harmful. For those of you who don't know, cabin air pressure is maintained by a high pressure air flow from the engines, so often exhaust fumes also accompany it into the cabin. This is particularly noticeable following engine start up

[girtbar]

well considering that prisons monitor the quality of air in side the prison, you would think that they could do the same onboard the a/c to ensure we are not being exposed to god knows what!

<--GB-->