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Fumes In The Cockpit / Captain Dies Later


Kip Powick

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One will generally notice some smell of dirty socks briefly during engine start when the AC packs are brought back  online.  Also when the throttle is retarded in descent.  Usually these are brief occurrences and clear quickly.  Sometimes oil can be allowed into the bleed air system by weak seals which will cause a greater amount of fumes.  The ACMs on older aircraft may also ingest oils from the bearings and heat up.  This case is generally worse in the winter time when the AC packs are running hot.

I do agree that these events are under reported and underrated.

 

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Most incidents of contaminted cabin air can be easily detected and reported. However, another serious and less detectable problem for all flight and cabin crew is exposure to cosmic radiation. Especially those crews working frequent long haul or polar routes, which has been the majority of my flying over the last 10 years. I’ve never heard directly about any limitations or scheduling rules regarding exposure. I do recall ALPA recommending flight crews avoid extended flight above FL310/31000’ which of course would be nearly impossible unless your airline isn’t concerned about fuel costs.

http://www.businessinsider.com/airplane-flight-cosmic-radiation-exposure-altitude-2015-11

http://www.alpa.org/resources/solar-cosmic-radiation-storms

http://jag.cami.jccbi.gov/cariprofile.asp

 

 

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26 minutes ago, conehead said:

I seem to recall some sort of study done with flight crews wearing radiation detectors for a period of time...

I think there have been many studies but it’s something not really discussed these days by airline flight or cabin crews. Years ago we had a professor from UWO who flew around with us at C3. His little onboard test tube experiments usually indicated some levels of radiation after each flight. That was at least 20 years ago. The data collected may have been part of someone’s thesis but nothing was ever reported back to the pilot group. 

As per my previous post and link the CDC does consider all flight crews to be radiation workers. Nice to know. 

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1 hour ago, conehead said:

I seem to recall some sort of study done with flight crews wearing radiation detectors for a period of time...

In The RCAF we wore radar dosimeters along with our "dog-tags" ....They didn't "detect" radiation and it was our understanding they were used to find out how much radiation we encountered every year.

They were brown disks about the size of 1/2 dollar coin. We turned them in once a year but never heard anything about them. They were phased out around 1968-70

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For my last 3 years at C3, I paid for dosimeter reading services. Was getting an interesting "trend". Then ALPA (if I recall) wanted to initiate a program which I was ready to join. Finally, a few jerks manoeuvred a pair of 767's into the WTC buildings and all was for naught...

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