Toxic cabin air: German Transport Minister wants action

By David Learmount

After decades of denial, the transport minister of a serving government has now called for urgent action over toxic fume incidents in airliners.

Germany’s Transport Minister Peter Ramsauer has written to the EU Transport Commissioner Siim Kallas calling for action from the European Aviation Safety Agency to come up with a solution to prevent the increasing number of reported incidents, seven of which were judged by the German accident investigator BFU to be high risk events.

Germany is the only country officially admitting that this issue even exists, and this is by virtue of its more rigorously applied reporting system and increasing restlessness among German pilots and cabin crew who are worried about their health in both the short and the long term.

This subject will not go away. The industry, which is quietly preparing to do something about it but keeps on putting off the evil day, will soon have to act. What Germany is trying to do, quite naturally, is to get EASA to make the decisions so that Germany does not have to act alone. Once EASA acts, the rest of the world will have to.

Sourced from Flight Global

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