“WE’RE basically the canaries – getting knocked down by the fumes first,” says Susan Michaelis, a former pilot who believes she was poisoned by fumes from leaking engine fuel while flying. At a meeting in London on 18 June, Michaelis pushed for “aerotoxic syndrome” to be recognised as a disease.
The problem, says Michaelis, of the University of New South Wales in Sydney, Australia, comes from the way compressed air is drawn off engines to supply the cabins. If the seal inside the engine is not secure, oil can leak into the cabin, contaminating air with tricresyl phosphate (TCP).
Michaelis’s…
