Voor mensen die geregeld vliegen begint de pijn snel toe te nemen. Alle vluchten naar Amerika, al gauw een uur of zeven tot twaalf, moeten volgens het Amerikaanse Department of Transport (DOT) rookvrij zijn, ook in de vliegtuigen die door buitenlandse maatschappijen worden beheerd.
De gevolgen van roken in vliegtuigen werden door ditzelfde DOT in 1989 uitgebreid onderzocht. Uit het (geheim gehouden) onderzoeksrapport bleek dat de gevolgen van roken in vliegtuigen miniem waren vergeleken met de schade die de kosmische straling op die vlieghoogtes bij de inzittenden aanrichtte (zie conclusies onderzoeksrapport en de in het rapport opgenomen tabellen). Tóch werden beetje bij beetje vergaande maatregelen ingevoerd! En waarom?
Uit het rapport blijkt duidelijk te worden waar het de vliegtuigmaatschappijen werkelijk om gaat wanneer ze rookverboden instellen, de brandstof (ETS=Environmental Tobacco Smoke):
Increasing ventilation rates could lower ETS exposures by as much as 33 percent, but associated fuel penalties would result in costs estimated to be greater than the benefits. Improved filter efficiency was estimated to provide only a marginal reduction (about 5 percent) in ETS exposures.
En:
For ETS, procedural options such as restriction of smoking and technological options such as increased ventilation were assessed. Of these options, a total ban on smoking was estimated to provide the greatest benefit at least cost. Estimated benefits were based on reduced lung-cancer mortality risks. Costs for procedural options associated with smokers’ inconvenience and discomfort, or displacement of smokers to other modes of transportation, could not be estimated due to data limitations.
De kosten zijn duidelijk, maar wat zijn de benefits?
In ieder geval niet de kwaliteit van de cabinelucht. Na het rookverbod werd het aantal luchtfilters in vliegtuigen verlaagd van 6 naar 2. Dat scheelde een hoop in brandstof. En leverde 250% meer tuberculose bij passagiers op.
Ook binnen Europa is er nog nauwelijks een vliegtuigmaatschappij te vinden die roken toestaat, ook niet op de langere vluchten, langer dan 3 uur.
Geen wonder dat de problemen aan boord beginnen toe te nemen. Eerder dit jaar deed de Duitse organisatie van cabinepersoneel al een beroep op de autoriteiten om in godsnaam roken weer toe te staan gezien het toenemende aantal incidenten rond roken.
Maar de anti-rokers zoeken andere methoden om het probleem aan te pakken. Zeer lezenswaardig, maar ook schokkend, is dit overzicht van methoden om de ‘air-rage’ te bestrijden.
Verder lezen:
- Internationale pilotenorganisatie wil roken terug
- Vrouwelijke passagier in gevangenis vanwege roken aan boord
- Cabinelucht is ziekmakend / Tweede artikel / Derde artikel
- Parfums aan boord verbieden?
Uit ‘Slow Burn‘:
For nearly two decades Americans have been bombarded with study after study condemning secondhand smoke, or ETS. Rarely have they been told about studies exonerating it. One you probably never heard of was titled “Airliner Cabin Environment Contaminant Measurements, Health Risks and Mitigation Options,” conducted in 1989 by the U.S. Department of Transportation in hopes of obtaining data to support a worldwide ban on smoking in airliners. Because smoking was already banned on many domestic flights, no-smoking planes were readily available for comparison with test planes in which the effects of smoking on cabin air were monitored.
To DOT’s surprise, it was discovered that levels of respirable suspended particulates, nicotine and carbon monoxide were actually the same or higher in nonsmoking flights than in the nonsmoking sections of smoking flights. It also estimated that for business passengers flying 480 hours a year starting at age 35, the lifetime risk of premature cancer deaths from environmental tobacco smoke (ETS) was .27 deaths per 100,000 cabin occupants. (That’s point 27.) For cosmic radiation, it was 504 deaths—some 1,867 times higher than the Environmental Protection Agency’s alleged risk from ETS.35
Did that give the department pause? Maybe for a milliscecond. DOT still declared that smoking should be totally extinguished from the skies because it would be too expensive to improve the ventilation and filtration of airliner cabin air. How expensive? According to Sara Mahler-Vossler: 36 cents per smoker on a Boeing 747, 93 cents on a 727.36
The real reason it would be too expensive (though DOT didn’t say so) was that, thanks to the smoking bans on domestic flights, the airlines had stopped ventilating cabins by blowing out stale air and replacing it with fresh air, which consumed a lot of jet fuel, and were using the cheaper method of mixing recirculated stale air with fresh air.
The airlines were in fact saving fuel worth $100 million a year this way, according to a witness for the cigarette makers at the flight attendants’ trial, engineer and aviation consultant Martin Godley. In many ways, airliner cabin air is actually worse today than it was before smoking was banned—and everybody thinks this was a great victory for the health, comfort and well-being of America’s commercial airline travelers.
Judge Robert Kaye of Dade County Circuit Court allowed only limited testimony about cosmic radiation, as well as about ozone, a naturally occurring carcinogen that can enter jets at high altitude, and another study on airliner cabin air by occupational safety expert Yolanda Janczenski, who had found no meaningful difference in cabin air pollutants before and after smoking was banned.38 The point at issue, the judge said, was whether secondhand smoke caused the diseases alleged by the flight attendants, not whether something else might also have caused them.
Zie ook: 2-1-2000, 5 in het Land. De eerste mensen beginnen zich te beklagen. De media vinden echter de boodschap van de anti’s belangrijker…. (Gebruikt Windows Media Player)
