Cabin Air Safety/Aerotoxic Syndrome

Liz McInnes Excerpts

Thursday 17th March 2016 Westminster Hall

[Liz McInnes (Heywood and Middleton) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mrs Gillan.

First, I will declare an interest, having been a Unite rep in a previous existence; I remain a member of the union. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Stalybridge and Hyde (Jonathan Reynolds) for securing this debate, and for his very measured opening speech.

My background is in science; I used to work as a biochemist for the NHS. So I am very wary about jumping to any conclusions; we need to weigh up the evidence. However, I support the request for an independent inquiry into this issue. The evidence is quite compelling and we need to progress. The employer’s duty of care has been talked about, and it is absolutely key to this issue that we assess the evidence that is available, examine the incidents that have occurred and try to establish whether there is a causative effect. We really need to take some action, and I hope that that is what we decide to do at the end of this debate.

Both my hon. Friend the Member for Stalybridge and Hyde and the hon. Member for Crawley (Henry Smith) have already talked about cabin air and where it comes from. It is quite significant that the new Boeing 787 uses a different method of supplying cabin air. The air is supplied by electronically driven compressors that take air directly from the atmosphere so there is no contact with the engines; there is no possibility of a seal failing and contaminants from the engine oil getting into the cabin air. One of my constituents, who is an air steward, has suggested to me that this new plane has been developed because it has been recognised that there are issues with the old system of bleed air. Again, however, that is speculation.

[The Minister of State, Department for Transport (Mr Robert Goodwill)]

I asked precisely the same question of my officials: was it done for that reason? They said, no, it was done for other reasons, not because of the air quality issue. Obviously, however, the effect is that air does not have to pass through the engine. The aircraft was designed for efficiency and that change was one way of making the aircraft more efficient; it was not made in reaction to this bleed air quality issue.

[Liz McInnes]

I thank the Minister for that intervention; that is very useful information. It reinforces the point about speculation and causative effects. Obviously, cabin crew say that the air issue was the reason why the 787 was developed with that system. If there is a public inquiry on this matter, I hope that information about that system will form part of the evidence.

My hon. Friend the Member for Stalybridge and Hyde said that some statistics showed that fume events occurred in one flight in 2,000. One of the statistics that I pulled out is from the Committee on Toxicity of Chemicals in Food, Consumer Products and the Environment. COT reported in 2007 that fume events occur on one flight in 100, so again there is some dispute over the incidence of these events. There is also anecdotal evidence that fume events occur even more often than that, but they are not being reported. The really surprising thing about all of this is that there are no chemical sensors in the aircraft. The noses of the cabin crew are the only detectors.

My constituent asked me not to give her name, but she was quite happy to talk to me about her experience as a cabin crew member. She described these fume events to me. She said that she has been in cabins when fumes have entered. She has flown for four different airlines and fume events have happened in planes from all four of them. She said to me, “Fumes come in. You smell the oil. It’s not being acknowledged by managers and higher officials in the airline industry when these incidents are reported.” When I spoke to her, she compared the effect of fume events with Gulf war syndrome. With Gulf war syndrome, we had soldiers coming back to the UK with massive neurological problems and it took a very long time for any investigation to be made and for it to occur to somebody that these problems were happening too often to be a coincidence. It is interesting that she made that comparison.

My constituent said to me that all cabin crew want is for this problem to be recognised and acknowledged. Until we have a full investigation, cabin crew will not feel that their employers are doing everything they can to safeguard them while they are at work.

[Chris Stephens (Glasgow South West) (SNP)]

Is part of the issue the lack of training for cabin crew to deal with these incidents when they occur?

[Liz McInnes]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for that intervention. From the research I have done and from the comments of people I have spoken to, I know that that is probably true. My constituent told me, “Smoke hoods are there in the plane if there is a fire or fumes on board.” Until recently, those smoke hoods had been used very rarely, but she told me that crew members were starting to use them because of their concerns about fume events on flights. Again, that is anecdotal evidence, but it shows the real concern out there and highlights an issue with training. These things should not be used, but they are used because crew are fearful for their health. He makes a good point, and I am grateful to him for raising that issue.

My hon. Friend the Member for Stalybridge and Hyde and various other Members have spoken about when the incidents started to be reported. My constituent said that she first heard of it 1998, when she started working for an airline. She said that cabin crew were talking about fume incidents even then.

Several hon. Members have mentioned the cases in which deaths unfortunately occurred, possibly as a result of aerotoxic syndrome. I, too, first became aware of the issue at a Unite briefing, where the parents of Matt Bass described what happened to their son. His symptoms appeared to be fairly non-specific, but it was reported that he was fatigued. He went down to rest and tragically he never woke up. There is a feeling that his symptoms were consistent with exposure to organophosphates, which are the chemicals that leak out occasionally in the bleed air.

[George Kerevan]

It is worth informing the Chamber that Matthew Bass had been an air worker for 15 years, so the effects were probably cumulative.

[Liz McInnes]

That is an important point. While the average member of the public goes on a flight perhaps twice a year—luckier people might fly more frequently than that—cabin crew have constant exposure. Working as cabin crew is a hard job. The hours are unsocial and it is a difficult environment to work in. I think most of them would probably expect not to feel 100% well most of the time. That colours the whole issue with the health of cabin crew. Some of the symptoms of so-called aerotoxic syndrome are non-specific and could easily be put down to the stresses and strains of the job, and that has served to confuse the issue.

The other prominent case, as has already been mentioned, was the pilot Richard Westgate, who sadly died in 2012. The coroner who dealt with Richard’s case issued a report that detailed five concerns, which I will go through because they are relevant to the debate. Those concerns were: that organophosphate compounds are present in aircraft cabin air; that the occupants of aircraft cabins are exposed to organophosphate compounds with consequential damage to their health; that impairment to the health of those controlling aircraft may lead to the death of occupants; that there is no real-time monitoring to detect such compounds in cabin air; and that no account is taken of genetic variation, which may render humans susceptible to exposure. That final point is important. There is a school of thought that not everyone is susceptible to organophosphate compounds and that there may be an element of genetic variation and genetic susceptibility, and I hope that that will be covered in any independent inquiry.

[Kirsten Oswald]

I am interested in the hon. Lady’s comments on the coroner’s report. When I looked into the issue, I noted that the responses of British Airways and the Civil Aviation Authority to the report have not been made public. Does she agree that it would be useful if that information was made public, because what is clearly lacking in this whole picture is facts?

[Liz McInnes]

Like the hon. Lady, I could not find any responses to the coroner’s report. She is absolutely right. We are here to establish the facts, to bring them together, to weigh up the evidence and to come to a scientific conclusion.

I want to talk a little more about Richard Westgate’s case. He was treated by Dr Michel Mulder, a specialist aviation doctor. He believes that Richard Westgate fell into the category for aerotoxic syndrome. Richard became a commercial pilot in 1998. He voluntarily grounded himself in 2011 after suffering whiplash in a car crash, but by that time he had already become concerned about his health and his memory. He was suffering from persistent headaches, chronic fatigue, loss of confidence and mood swings. Like many pilots, he failed to tell his employer for fear of losing his job. That is a key issue. We have to encourage our cabin staff and airline pilots to speak up if they are concerned about their health. I can understand the fear of losing their job, but I am sure most airlines are good employers, and we need to give all staff the confidence to express concerns without fear of any punitive measures being taken against them.

Richard sought private medical advice so that he would avoid any blemishes on his health record, and he was treated by Dr Mulder. Interestingly, Dr Mulder said that Richard had been misdiagnosed with depression. He said:

“So many pilots are misdiagnosed because there is so little awareness of aerotoxic syndrome.”

Dr Mulder obviously believes that aerotoxic syndrome exists, and I hope his evidence would form part of any sort of independent inquiry.

I want to touch on organophosphate poisoning. My hon. Friend the Member for Newport East (Jessica Morden) is no longer in her place, but she made comparisons between aerotoxic syndrome and organophosphate poisoning caused by sheep dip chemicals, which is quite common in farmers. It is interesting that the described symptoms of aerotoxic syndrome and sheep dip poisoning are similar. That link was discovered by Dr Peter Julu, an autonomic neurophysiologist, when he was doing some work on sheep dips for the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food. Coincidentally, he had several pilots referred to him at the same time who were suffering from unexplained illness. Dr Julu said:

“To my amazement, the kind of symptoms and findings I was getting from farmers was very similar to the pilots, yet occupationally they couldn’t be more diverse.”

I found it interesting that those two completely different jobs have a common link. The issue with organophosphates is that they attack the autonomic nervous system, including the brain stem. That part of the nervous system deals with emotion and short-term memory. Significantly, it affects an important group of neurotransmitters, including serotonin, and that explains the incidence of depression.

I reinforce the points that my hon. Friend the Member for Stalybridge and Hyde made. Unite is pursuing 60 health and safety cases related to toxic air. There is dispute over the causative link between health problems and the quality of cabin air, and we need further evidence to confirm a causative link. There is insufficient research into the matter. I also echo his requests for an independent public inquiry, enforced monitoring and testing of exposure levels and, finally, mandatory reporting of fume events.