Smoke detection

[tubby linton]

My old Airbus has a tube from the avionics bay that leads into the flight deck.A fan draws air through this tube so that a crew member can confirm the presence of smoke in the avionics bay.
How detrimental is it to my health to be sniffing this smoke and do any other aircraft have a similar design?

[hetfield]

How detrimental is it to my health to be sniffing this smoke
Hi tubby:),

our SOP was NOT to use the sniffer fan.
An avionic smoke warning had to be treated like real smoke.

Kind regards

[IFixPlanes]

...and do any other aircraft have a similar design?
I think that this is unique for A300 & A310.

[tubby linton]

I was wondering how they managed to certify this system. I am very reluctant to smell any kind of fumes as I was once told that modern plastics andcomposites have a nasty habit of attaching themselves permanently tothe linings of your lungs!

[dixi188]

I guess they considered us Flight Engineers to be expendable when it was certified.
The tube is from the "Minimum Equipment Bay" and you are going to sniff a little bit of electrical burning.
I doubt there would be enough to cause permanent damage.

I've used my nose many times when looking for faults in systems.

I remember many years ago when spannering on a Viscount betweem Muscat and Bombay, there was a smell of electrical burning. It took about 2 seconds to discover it was the HF transmitter that was pouring smoke due to being stuck on transmit. CB pulled, problem solved.
And of course we were 2 hours from the nearest airport.

[AerocatS2A]

What would you prefer? To be able to smell the presence of smoke which will allow you to accurately deal with the problem before it becomes serious and maybe land having taken some toxic fumes into your lungs, or to not be able to smell the smoke and have the aeroplane plunge to the ground in a ball of flames.

[grounded27]

Aerocat beat me to the punch with his response. To ease your concerns a bit, I am sure the thousands of hours you have spent breathing cabin air and being exposed to increased levels of radiation have done far more damage than sniffing some fumes to confirm your worst fears.