Thursday December 7, 2000

Airplane Air

A big stress factor for travelers is all the bad air you have to breathe on big jets. There are lots of new products that claim to clean your personal air space. But do they really work? We sent attorney Mike Bryant in search of the Consumer Pay-off.

Airplane travel has never been more annoying… miserable delays, packed flights, and air that many people believe makes them sick.

Travelers insist bad cabin air is giving them headaches, colds, nausea and worse.

Diana Fairchild was a flight attendant for 20 years. She says, "There's tuberculosis, flu germs circulating."

Now she's written "Jet Smarter." Diana says it's not in your head, bad cabin air is making you sick. Diana explains, "What's in the air is a toxic soup. There's pesticide residue because the planes are sprayed regularly. There are hydraulic fluid leaks in the engines that are sucked into the clean air supply."

Now passengers are trying to protect themselves from airborne yuck while they're airborne with everything from surgical masks to hi-tech personal clean air devices. But do any of these little gizmos that hang around your neck really work?

Simon Turner is an environmental engineer, indoor air is his business. He put three personal air purifiers to the test... the Ionic Breeze, Mini-mate Ultra Miniature and the Air Supply. Not only are many personal purifiers a waste of money, they may actually be harmful to your health!

Simon explains, "Mostly they seem to work by generating negative ions. Some of them apparently generate ozone, a fairly reactive gas that is known to be a pollutant."

Translation: they blow ionized air and ozone up your nose, but Simon says that air isn't any better than the cabin air. He says, "They could irritate the respiratory tract in people who are sensitive, irritate the mucous membranes and clog respiratory."

So where has all the good air gone? Diana says, "What they do is they recycle at least 50% of the already breathed air and only pump in 50% fresh air."

Diana and Simon both claim it would only cost about a buck per person to increase the flow of fresh air on planes.

So what to do while you're kicking back on your coach cabin cushions? You can adjust the air flow to get the most air possible - check with the folks in the cock pit to be sure they aren't holding back any spare air. Use a simple surgical mask or even a new fangled personal portable de-ionizer.

If you think the air up there can't cause serious health problems, consider this. Three years ago, there was a confirmed case of an airline passenger infecting fellow travelers with tuberculosis.