Just this morning I was made aware of the latest issue of our CASA (Australian) Flight Safety Magazine which contains an article on contaminated air in airliner cabins as the result of abnormal ops (equipment defects resulting in oil leaks etc)

It is of interst to gas turbine modellers because it describes the medical aspects of even short term exposure to engine oils of the very type we use.

The relevant aricle is on Page 60.

Everyone who uses synthetic turbine oil should, in my opinion but its YOUR health, read it.

The link : http://www.casa.gov.au/fsa/2007/oct/

Regards,

David Gladwin.

Hi David:

Thanks for the reference, but not much help for us turbine pilots, IMO.......this article is similar to those published in so called "Lay Medical Journals" for patient consumption......we put those in waiting rooms for patients to read and educate themselves a bit about current diagnoses and treatment.....these are not to be confused with the New England Journal of Medicine or the British Medical Journal, or myriad other high quality, refereed journals, where the real research data is published....

The author admits that there are no scientific studies, i.e. double blinded studies, with carefully controlled statistics, and sample sizes large enough to be statistically significant at the p<.001 level......without those kinds of studies, with the large number of vague symptoms listed and possible other toxic agents in the air, no definite conclusion can be drawn as to an actual culprit......

That is not to say that I take a cavalier attitude toward TCP and other organo-phosphates......for years, TCP was used as an additive in gasoline here in the states....you could even buy small cans of it to add yourself to gas and oil......this was pyrolized in the car engines and spewed out the exhausts for many years until their use was banned......OP's are still in use world wide in pesticides and are also present in synthetic oils, not specified as turbine oils....

Problem is no definite numbers exist for short term exposures like we have in model jet flying, or even in cabin environments as the article notes.....

Having said all that, I do handle Aeroshell 500 with care.....I use nitrile gloves when filling up a new 5 gallon kero jug, I promptly wipe off any fuel off my hands when refueling, I don't stand downwind of running turbines if I can help it, and never run a turbine in any kind of a closed space......

I also will be trying out some Mobil DTE light as I own (2) 54 size Wrens, one of which I built myself and can readily disassemble and check the bearings and combustor myself.......if all goes well, as I expect it will based on recent acceptance of DTE and other 2-stroke oils by Wren, I will probably be moving up the big-dollar food chain slowly in my other engines including AMT NL Peggy and Oly, JetCat Titan and P180.......

Maybe that process will eventually be accelerated by having all the turbine manufacturers run some test beds themselves, and contract with a few modelers who put lot of hours on engines/yr to do some field testing, with, say, the 25 hour inspection completed gratis.......

Tom

We are having this discussion in the Jetcat forum now. Its not really about the health hazards of turbine oil but more so about the testing of new oils. This issue seems to be getting more and more prevelant as time goes on with more people getting into turbines and getting smarter about them at the same time.

Harry

Thanks for your valuable input Tom.

I offered the input and reference for what its worth but I have seen papers written by medically qualified researchers here in Australia who have come to the firm conclusion that OPs in synthetic turbine oils ARE a potential and actual serious medical hazard in certain conditions. I presume the article publication was approved by the CMO of CASA.

Ten years ago when I lost my licence on medical grounds the possibilty of OP poisoning was discounted simply, in my view, because the aeromedical community did not know (or did not admit to knowing) much about it in relation to aviation. ( I presented then and still do some of the classic symptoms of OP poisoning and I HAD been flying a 757 with a slight oil leak from the center bearing of the left engine, left engine bleed feeds the flight deck air)

Last year when my good friend lost HIS licence the aeromedics eventually agreed that he IS suffering from OP poisoning and his ONLY exposure to it was on the 757 a known "culprit" in certain circumstances. His symptoms are significant.

I must disagree that its not much use to we jet fliers because we DO handle and use it and perhaps from now on we will use it as a potentially hazardous substance and will take appropriate precautions, as you do.

Regards,

David.

David,
Thanks for posting the article. Last year I went to the ER with numbness of limbs, fingers and and lips.
Avoiding exposure to model jet fuel and these conditions went away.
This in my opinion is to be taken very seriously.
Bob

I know it looks out of place at the jet rallies I fly at, but I'm the one they usually laugh at for wearing blue gloves when I fuel up my jets... It doesn't hurt to play it safe with this stuff.

Kelly

Don't get me wrong David....in no way am I playing down the hazards of OP.....my point is that while acute and chronic poisoning on an airline flightdeck may occur with situations of leaky bearings as you describe, I am not sure that data can be tranferred to Jet Modelers directly......

There is no question that acute and chronic OP poisoning happens quite frequently in agricultural workers, either professionals or backyard gardeners who use Malathion or it's more potent relative Parathion in a careless fashion while spraying their fruit trees...or my wife using powdered Diazinon on her roses on a windy day...the serious acute poisoning produces some dramatic symptoms of nausea, vomiting, diarrhea, asthma, delerium, motor weakness, all due to the sudden inhibition of acetylcholinesterase by the OP........but these reactions almost always occur with a massive inhalational overdose of one of the aerosol pesticides....

The chronic reactions can be more subtle, but often can be non-reversible...producing a chronic neuropathy and mental deterioration due to the chronic overstimulation of the nerve synapses by acetylcholine, one of the most important neurotransmitters we have.....

The fact that turbine modelers have been using OP oils for at least 12-15 years, with few if any 100% documented cases of acute or chronic poisoning, supports the manufacturer's position of recommending it for use in their engines.......one could do a tough calculation of what the ppm of the OP is in, say, a volume of space behind a turbine of 100 feet on a side......corrected for density altitude and wind speed behind the turbine, and using the volume of oil and mass air-flow thru the motor.....I suspect that the resultant ppm would be quite small, probably below the safe levels recommended by health and environmental agencies since there have not been a significant number of documented poisoning events.....

So be cautious while pouring the stuff....use gloves.....and don't stand behind a turbine, huffing the exhaust......until we all feel comfortable using non-OP oils in all our pricey turbines......

Tom

Tom , I am neither qualified or knowledgable enough to debate the medical aspects of this issue with an MD such as yourself. However since my post this morning and following the release of this article I am informed that there have been calls for the resignation of the author from his MO psition with CASA .

A number of professionals who ARE qualified to comment on the OP issue believe he has seriously understated the problems and the tests by Airbus and Boeing considered contamination (or lack of it) only in normal operations.

I passed on the info. for what its worth, but with some layman level knowledge of the OP problem, but I wholeheartedly agree with your final paragraph. Its almost as easy to treat the stuff as toxic with some simple precautions as you suggest. The older I get the more I value, treasure in fact, my good health ; I will still be using turbine oils for some time to come, but with some extra care !

The cabin air qualty issue is considered serious and ongoing but probably has no place on a model jet forum now that users have been advised that the stuff is toxic to a greater or lesser degree, so for now I'll leave it at that unless there are further develpoments which may be of interest or significance to model gas turbine operators.



Regards, David.

We are made up of organophosphates in the end, as RNA and DNA are organophosphates, but they are the good kind....

One thing I have not seen written up is the stability of the OP in the oils we use, as we use them.....in agricultural use, they have a short half-life once applied.....most of them kill the insects on contact but breakdown quite rapidly with exposure to light and heat from the sun.....

I wonder just how much of the real toxic chemical form of OP remains after passing thru our combustors and heated well above 500C.......could be that the exhaust gases are really not that toxic, and all we must be careful of is the liquid form while we add to kero and during refueling.....

The airline cabin contamination problem is something I haven't heard much about before, but sure seems like it could be a problem for air crew, as well as passengers who routinely take long, transoceanic flights, if bad stuff can leak into the bleed air.......here in the U.S., I would bet the airlines have kept it quiet before all the data is in so as not to stir up the liability attorneys from suing the airlines every time someone gets sick while on a flight....most of the press here has reported only on the possibility of spreading disease, like the fellow from Atlanta with Tuberculosis earlier this year.....

Tom

Me Too! I wear gloves every time I fuel my airplane.

Hey Shaun:

Is that code for safe sex down in Texas?

Tom

You crack me up Tom, just the other day when you posted about the medical journals, I was thinking how fortunate I was to be a part of a hobby surrounded by so many articulate, educated people.

Almost makes up for all the morons

Stay warm this winter, won't likely see you till Florida Jets.

Why? Because he buggered the party line on how .not. "clean" pressurized cabin air might be? He did call for more investigation and research though.