Aerotoxic Association – The Charity (2007) Press Release
IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Tuesday 29 June 2021
Nine US airline CEO’s are put on notice of the ongoing contaminated Toxic Cabin Air public health scandal.
After decades of inaction and cover-up over the serious health and safety issue of Toxic Cabin Air which can affect anyone who flies – but particularly professional aircrew and frequent flying passengers a letter and supporting evidence dated 28 June 2021 has been sent by former USAAF pilot and aviation insurance specialist John Lind to nine US airline CEO’s putting them on notice of their corporate responsibility to recognise this well-known, covered-up cause of public ill health and introduce the known and available solutions – urgently.
Captain John Hoyte founded the Aerotoxic Association in 2007 to provide support to those survivors of Aerotoxic Syndrome or Poisoning which was first identified in 1999 by a US doctor, a French forensic scientist, and an Australian toxicologist.
In 2017, a peer reviewed Dutch published paper estimated that there are 1,000,000 frequent flyers and aircrew with Aerotoxic Syndrome in Europe alone with 27,000 in The Netherlands, but the public still remain unaware of this hidden cause of serious illness or the treatments available.
A recent successful 10 years long legal case in The Netherlands of Evelyn van den Heuvel, a former KLM cabin crew confirms that the public are being harmed, yet public justice for many is glacially slow and open public awareness and debate remain non-existent.
As many jet planes with this seven decade old known, fundamental design flaw remain grounded due to the Covid-19 pandemic – now is the time to begin to fix the problem and stop the doubting and arguing over whether the public are being permanently injured or not in modern day gas chambers as the solutions are both known and available since 2017.
International authorities remain in denial both of the cause of serious public illness and the known, available solutions, which are in the public interest after 14 years despite overwhelming, dated positive evidence going back to 1921.
It has now been decided to take direct action in the public interest to expose the continuing cover-up of any mention of this public poisoning, which will speed up the imminent recognition of Aerotoxic Syndrome as an Occupational Disease and the continued claim of ‘No positive evidence’ as criminal fraud.
The Aerotoxic Association – The Charity (AeA) works hard to spread awareness of a little known cause of mass public ill health by representing and supporting all aerotoxic survivors who travel in aircraft and expresses serious concerns about the media cover-up of any mention of the aerotoxic word in recent years.
The AeA has continued to work with mitigating strategies that must be urgently undertaken in order to supply aircrew and passengers cleaner breathing air, rather than the current method of piping air directly off the jet engines or Auxiliary Power Unit (APU) without any filtration, a process known as ‘bleed air’ into the cabin.
To also install ‘toxic air detectors’ to monitor poisonous gases in all jet airliners urgently as using human noses and eyes makes no common sense in 2021.
However, it has become clear that the industry and some key consumer groups within Europe (see: https://www.gcaqe.org/gcaqe-response-to-anec-may-2021) appear to be undermining the work undertaken in order to delay or eliminate the need for new Air Quality standards to be published according to GCAQE (Global Cabin Air Quality Executive) in May 2021.
John Hoyte, the Chairman of AeA and a former BAe 146 Training Captain commented: “There is a clear attempt by industry and some other groups representing consumers to prevent the public from knowing about Aerotoxic Poisoning – as the UK government now calls this 22-year-old, known occupational disease. Yet now a strong letter to nine US airline CEO’s has put them all on notice of their corporate responsibility to put human health first as a matter of public interest.’
The AeA calls upon industry, consumer groups for freedom of speech, and for the regulators EASA, FAA, CAA and others to support the need for transparency, as a way to protect the health, safety and welfare of the travelling public and aircrew. This in turn will be a great advance for the long-term future of the aviation industry.
For further information contact: Captain John Hoyte of AeA Spokesperson
Email: john.hoyte@aerotoxic.org +44 (0) 7773771867
Aerotoxic Association Ltd. The Charity (2007)
27 Old Gloucester St, London WC1N 3AX
Notes to editors:
Dated Evidence from US passenger Ms Robin Montmayeur to US Congress of 4 June 2003 (available at www.aerotoxic.org ) is possibly the strongest past dated evidence of a system failure and the earliest AOPIS (Aviation Organophosphate Information Service) documentary of 2004 explained in detail and also featuring Ms Montmayeur and other international professional aircrew such as Captain Julian Soddy of Balpa (British Airline Pilots Association).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wSCM6CeCm1A
The GCAQE (Global Cabin Air Quality Executive) which was established in 2006 and is the leading group in the world representing airline employees in relation to the issue of contaminated air on aircraft recently began a global multi lingual ‘clean air campaign’, with short videos available at: https://www.gcaqe.org/cleanair
- Cabin breathing air on all aircraft apart from the Boeing 787 is taken directly from the engines and provided unfiltered to the aircraft. This is known as ‘Bleed Air’.
- Bleed air is known to become contaminated with engine oils and/or hydraulic fluids. These are hazardous especially to the unborn.
- Contaminated bleed air events have been recognised as occurring since the 1950s.
- No aircraft currently flying has any form of detection system fitted to warn when these events occur.
- Flight safety is being compromised by contaminated air events.
- Crew and passengers have been reporting short and long-term health effects as a consequence of exposure to contaminated air.
- Contaminated air events are not rare and known to be under reported.
- Passengers are never told about the risks or these exposures.
- The aviation industry has and continues to fail to adequately address this issue.
- A recent US ruling supporting that contaminated cabin air is a health and flight safety issue can be seen here: (https://perma.cc/98B9-34JY). This US ruling comes 10 years after the High Court of Australia upheld a ruling that inhaling heated engine oil fumes were harmful (Joanne Turner case) and twenty-one years after the Compensation Court of New South Wales in Australia ruled, on 28 April 1999 in the Alysia Chew case. Alysia Chew had flown for Ansett and East West Airlines and had been exposed to fumes on the BAe 146 between January 1992 and October 1993. The New South Wales Compensation Court reviewed her claim that she was: “exposed to fumes, toxic substances and other irritants whilst carrying out her duties as a flight attendant” and ruled she had: “Suffered injury arising out of and in the course of her employment”.
ENDS.
