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Air Travel and Health (Science and Technology Committee Report)

I am delighted to take part in this debate and to see that the noble Countess, Lady Mar, is here in attendance on the committee, although I know that she does not feel able to participate as she has been having trouble with her voice. If I say anything that she agrees with, I am obviously right; if I say anything on my own behalf, I take full responsibility and blame for it. The committee is to be congratulated, and I am particularly delighted by the contributions that the chairman and its members have made this afternoon to an important issue that has been increasingly accepted by Ministers. I have been campaigning on air contamination and fume events in aircraft cabins and flight decks for almost 10 years, but before I come to that specific problem, I want to touch on one or two of the other recommendations made by the committee and on the Government’s response. First, I shall deal with recommendation 5.1. As the noble Lord, Lord Haskel, said, the Government dismissed the committee's concerns that the airlines should not be fully responsible for handling queries and complaints on health issues. It should surely be the AHU, which is answerable to the CAA and through it to Ministers. The public will always be suspicious that the industry will be commercially biased. It is extremely important that that issue is accountable through Ministers. The committee concludes: "““This is a lost opportunity””." We should agree. In relation to recommendations 5.4 and 5.7, the Government dismiss evidence from the committee that not enough relevant research is commissioned or funded. The committee asked Ministers to think again, and I am sure we agree. On recommendation 5.13, Ministers rejected the advice that passengers should never remain on an aircraft for more than 30 minutes when the ventilation systems are not operational. That has also been referred to by members of the committee. However, it is not just passengers who are affected; the pilot and cabin crew may well suffer a cumulative effect rather than just the occasional incident experienced by the passenger. At the very least the committee is right to insist that a new reporting procedure should be put in place to record whenever 30 minutes is exceeded. I turn now to recommendation 5.17, with which I am principally concerned and which has been referred to by both the chairman of the committee and the noble Lord, Lord Broers. This addresses the issue of what happens when there is an air contamination incident. The committee’s report, which was published in May this year, referred only briefly to the Government’s response. It did not give it in full and to be frank is unduly complacent. The full recommendation is as follows: "““We recommend that the AHWG-sponsored research to identify the substances produced during a fume event be completed urgently. It should be followed up by an epidemiological study on ""pilots to ascertain the incidence and prevalence of ill health in air crews and any association there might be with the exposure to chemicals identified in the AHWG-sponsored study, paying particular attention to the synergistic effect of these chemicals””." It is an extremely important recommendation that has not been dealt with adequately either in the resumé or, indeed, in the Government’s response. The committee is entitled to a full explanation of why Ministers have been dragging their feet. These issues have raised questions in the past, and the noble Countess, Lady Mar, and I have been given vague answers about the viability of research proposals in this regard. Even when we met the Aviation Minister, Mr Jim Fitzpatrick, on 22 October, he could not give us a satisfactory explanation. It is true that the Government have come a long way on the issue. I recall way back on 28 July 2000 raising this issue during an adjournment debate. The Minister responding did not even think that it was worth referring to in his wind-up. In an Answer given in February 2004, the Government were still insisting that they were, "““not aware of any adverse long-term health effects in flight crew that can be traced back to the cabin environment””.—[Official Report, Commons, 9/2/04; col. 1234W.]" That was said despite the fact that the committee heard extraordinary evidence that in 2000 the CAA actually suspended the medical certificate of a BAe 146 pilot. Yet four years later, the Government were trying to pretend that there was no problem. Even after the Contaminated Air Protection Conference held in April 2005 at Imperial College, at which I was a keynote speaker, the Aviation Health Working Group stated: "““Representatives of the Department for Transport and the Department of Health attended the recent international conference on contaminated air, but no new evidence on the presence or effect of low levels of organophosphates in aircraft cabins was presented””." I think that the group should look again at the record of that conference. However, the commissioning of the Cranfield University research is most welcome, and the fact that it is making some progress is good. But there are still doubts about the method and extent of that research. Chris Winder, a senior professor of applied toxicology at the School of Safety Science at the University of New South Wales, suggested in 2006 that, "““mists and aerosol particulates will settle under the force of gravity, and where they coalesce or adhere to the walls of their container, the concentration of the mist in the air would drop dramatically, leaving only a low vapour residual””." Thus, he goes on to conclude, there could be a false-negative analysis. Can the Minister tell us what remedial steps the researchers at Cranfield will be taking to ensure that their analysis is not undermined in this way? The report rightly recommends that a proper epidemiological study of the pilots and cabin crew affected should be undertaken. Surely the Minister accepts that this is now urgent, and the committee must insist that the evidence from Dr Sarah Mackenzie-Ross—both her written submission of 7 June 2007 and her subsequent oral presentation on 10 July 2007—must be followed up immediately, before the trail goes cold. Members of the Committee will recall the Independent Pilots Association’s findings, based on research by the Global Cabin Air Quality Executive, that 86 per cent of 242 pilots—past and present—who had been responsible for BAe 146 flights had experienced contaminated air events, 57 per cent reported various adverse effects, 25 per cent reported medium or long-term health effects, and 8.5 per cent appear to have been medically retired or had their medical certificate withdrawn by the CAA. This is quite common; it is not really such a tiny situation as Ministers have suggested in the past. I emphasise again that ill health among occasional air passengers is serious, but how much more serious is acute or chronic illness among those who are regularly and consistently responsible for the safety of our aircraft? The airlines and aircraft manufacturers have shown that they insufficiently protect the safety of crews and passengers. Only Ministers, not the industry, are accountable to the public. If anything went seriously wrong, they would be blamed, and rightly so. While this problem still exists in some aircraft, some of the worst offenders—notably some of the BAe 146 aircraft—have been withdrawn from service, and more responsible carriers such as Flybe, which is based at Exeter, have disposed of them, partly on account of their deleterious effects on the air quality outside. However, their engines’ impact on air quality inside could be even more serious. Incidentally, I wonder what has happened to the Department for Transport’s own comments on the committee’s recommendation that the JAA should reconsider, "““its requirement for ventilation of the flight deck with only fresh air””." This seems to have disappeared. How far has the Government’s Aviation Health Working Group or the AHU got with advice for those dealing with victims of serious air contamination events? I understand that Dr Robert Harrison of the Division of Occupational and Environmental Medicine at the University of California published only in August 2008 a document entitled Management of Exposure to Aircraft Bleed-Air Contaminants Among Airline Workers—A Guide for Health Care Providers. Surely the very least that our Ministers should do is to read that carefully and see whether it applies to our situation, too. People’s lives and livelihoods have been very seriously affected by these problems. I am sure that I do not need to remind either Members of the Grand Committee or members of the Select Committee that there have been near disasters as a result of these contamination incidents elsewhere in Europe, notably in Sweden, with pilots and co-pilots incapacitated. Too many experienced flight officers have been forced into early retirement by consequent ill health. Simply phasing out specific aircraft or specific ventilation systems is not enough. In the mean time, what of those who have been so adversely affected? We have seen in research into the illness suffered by veterans of the first Gulf War what delays can do to undermine the quality of research. Should not the Government establish fully what the toxic effects of tricresyl phosphate are and how toxic it is compared with other chemicals? Ministers have drawn a blank on this issue in Written Answers to me in this House. The GCAQE, led by Captain Susan Michaelis and Tristan Lorraine, submitted substantial evidence on the toxicity of these chemicals and their various isomers. It is unclear why the committee was unpersuaded by their expert submissions. Dr Sarah Mackenzie-Ross, whose excellent research at UCL is well known, has referred to the possibility of a synergistic effect occurring when chemicals such as tricresyl phosphate are mixed. There may also be a serious risk from the processes of disinfection, when cabin crews have to carry it out in advance of landings in and from tropical climates. Each of the individual chemicals is said to be safe, but very little work has been done on analysing the effects of what for some proves to be a lethal mix of different chemicals. The regulatory approach so far seems to be equivalent to proclaiming that electricity and water are safe on their own, without bothering to point out the grave dangers that can arise if both are used in the same environment. Fume events of various kinds that threaten not only the long-term health of airline staff but the immediate safety of all on board a given aircraft are currently not reported adequately. There are clear signals from within the industry that the consequences for pilots of reporting such events can be dire. Licences can be lost and careers ended. If these issues, many of which are complex, are ever to be resolved, we must address that fundamental issue. In his response, I hope that the Minister will be able to answer some key questions. When will the Cranfield research be published? What steps are being taken to ensure that it commands the confidence of campaigners on this issue? For example, has the GCAQE been consulted on the methods and scope of the research? Will the Minister now, on the basis of this report, refute the conclusions of the Committee on Toxicity that an epidemiological study is unnecessary? It is manifestly necessary, and has been for some 10 years, which has been reinforced by our own committee. What action is the Aviation Health Working Group taking to investigate the effects of mixing chemicals in a cabin air environment? How sure is the Minister that benign individual chemical ingredients do not together amount to a toxic recipe? Finally, what steps will the Government now take to ensure that every fume event is reported? Is legislation now required to compel airlines to manage this process effectively? The pilots, cabin crew and passengers affected by contaminated air events suffer in the long term. The Government have at last begun to recognise the problem, and the recent court ruling in relation to Georgina Downs’s separate case on pesticides, including organophosphates, being used near people’s homes is also a welcome development. But failure to act on a problem that Ministers now recognise is almost a more callous betrayal of passenger and staff interests than the total blindness that preceded it. This is a very serious issue. I am delighted that our committee it has returned to it again; and I hope that this debate, as well as its report, will stimulate more action from the Government.