ASTM STP 1393 Air Quality and Comfort in Airliner Cabins
ASTM STP 1393 is offered by IHS as part of an online subscription to the Special Technical Publications Library.
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This publication contains all the papers presented at the symposium Air Quality and Comfort in Airliner Cabins in October of 1999. The symposium was sponsored by ASTM Committee D22 on Sampling and Analysis of Atmosphere, and its Subcommittee D22.05 on Indoor Air. The actual questions or comments and authors' closures are given after each paper in this STP.
Among the issues the symposium was convened to address was proper characterization of the airliner cabin environment and its effects on the occupants. Without adequate characterization, one can only speculate about potential causes of various types of discomfort that seem to be commonly reported by the occupants, and attempts to improve the situation may be misguided.
The symposium brought together more than 80 professionals representing public and private interests in the United States, Canada, and numerous countries overseas. The primary aim of the symposium was to provide a platform for sharing state-of-the-art information on various aspects of cabin air quality with all parties interested in the topic.
The keynote address for the symposium was given by Russell Rayman, M.D., Executive Director of the Aerospace Medical Association, Alexandria, VA. Dr. Rayman’s address presented a hypothesis that the presence of contaminants or indicators such as carbon dioxide, carbon monoxide, particles, ozone, and volatile organic chemicals in the aircraft cabin can cause symptoms such as headaches, nausea, or respiratory irritation. Based on the results of various monitoring studies that have been conducted, a conclusion can be drawn that levels of contaminants found in airliner cabins are not likely to cause adverse health effects. Nonetheless, complaints of discomfort or health symptoms, especially from flight attendants, appear to be real. Thus, other factors associated with air travel, such as barometric pressure, hypoxia, vibration, temperature/humidity, fatigue, and jet lag, need to be considered as potential causative factors and investigated in greater depth. Dr. Rayman concluded that future research needs to address areas such as viruses in the cabin environment and redefining acceptable cabin altitude standards.
The papers in this publication are organized into six sessions covering the following topical areas:
- Cabin Air Quality Measurements
- Chemicals, Toxicity, and Effects
- Reviews and Standards
- Modeling and Control of Cabin Air Quality
- Cabin Air Quality and Emerging Issues/Research
- Relationships between Cabin Environment Factors and Comfort and Health Responses
Specific topics addressed by papers in this collection include:
- ASHRAE standards
- contaminants
- ventilation rates
- bioeffluents
- body odor
- Volatile organic contaminants (VOCs)
- Computational fluid dynamics (CFD) analysis
- photocatalytic oxidation (PCO) reactors designed for VOC control
- ozone and relative humidity in airline cabins
- Air Quality Computer Simulation
- Indoor Air Quality (IAQ) parameters
- One of the aims of the symposium was to identify needs in the area of standards development. Four candidate topics for standards were introduced during the symposium. The topics include:
- Protocol for cabin air quality measurements during episodic conditions
- Practice for air quality measurement on aircraft, including specifications for sampling media, sampling lines, and other accessories
- Uniform methods and criteria for reporting and categorizing symptoms
- Practice for defining adequate check interval for measuring cabin air quality on aircraft (or frequency of measurement to obtain representative data)
The papers presented at the symposium collectively focus on characterization of the aircraft cabin environment and effects on the occupants. Purchase this STP to gain access to the presentations and the vigorous discussions that followed, participants gained broad perspectives and valuable insights into issues and challenges associated with the aircraft cabin environment.