Blood Test to Prove Exposure - Urgent Request for Funding
Through
your involvement with GCAQE and your individual union, you know that
exposure to oil fumes supplied to the cabin and flight deck can cause
serious neurological problems and can threaten flight safety. Some know
this from personal experience, but anybody can research the many peer-reviewed
papers plus the reports from aviation safety boards, manufacturers,
and military investigators. The problem is irrefutable, but time and
again, airlines claim that affected crewmembers are either malingering
or have an underlying medical condition independent of the aircraft,
enabling the airlines to deny the responsibility of lost wages and medical
bills, not to mention cleaning the air supply. Since airlines need neither
monitor contaminants in the air supply nor share aircraft mechanical
records, they get away with denying the problem. Many affected crews
are unable to prove exposure to oil fumes and are forced to leave the
industry with serious health problems and limited – if any - employment
options.
How to send money
Prof.
Clem Furlong's Curriculum Vitae (adobe
pdf)
Research
paper written by Prof. Clem Furlong (adobe
pdf)
Clearly, if airlines are going to be under any pressure to prevent oil contamination of the air supply and to take responsibility for ill crews and passengers, there needs to be a means to definitively prove exposure to oil fumes.
To this end, for the past three years, Prof. Clem Furlong and his
research team at the University of Washington in the US have been working
to deliver just that, per a request from GCAQE’s own Captain Tristan
Loraine.
Although alternative products are available, engine oils used on the
commercial fleet worldwide contain 1-5% tricresylphosphates (TCPs) -
highly toxic additives that reduce wear on the aircraft engine. When
you are exposed to some of the forms of TCPs, your body converts them
into a toxic metabolite called “CSP” or cresyl cyclic saligenin phosphate.
CSP then “decorates” some of the enzymes in your blood, causing specific
structural changes that can be measured. Proving exposure to TCPs makes
sense because aviation engine oils are one of the few sources. Airlines
can not claim that crewmembers were exposed to TCPs while gardening
or working on their car, for example.
Prof. Furlong and his team are now in the final stages of identifying
two of those “CSP-decorated” enzymes in the blood. One should be detectable
in the blood for about a month after exposure, and another, for up to
three months.
These tests will not prove how much oil a person was exposed to,
but they will prove that the person was exposed which is very important
because it means that airlines can no longer deny exposure. Crewmembers
can supply this proof of exposure to their physician(s) to make the
case to their airline that their ill health is a result of exposure
to oil fumes in the aircraft. Can you imagine what will happen to the
status quo of denial, especially when affected passengers start to request
this blood test? When completed, the
impact of these blood tests will be dramatic.
What’s next? Prof. Furlong and his team are working on an enrichment
process to enhance the sensitivity of the blood tests and to decrease
the sample preparation time which will reduce the cost of analysis when
these tests are commercialized. Some
of the steps in their research are less obvious, such as the need to
generate heavy isotope-labeled proteins to serve as internal standards
and provide accurate determinations of exposure. It is a highly complex
and time-consuming process, but these researchers understand the obstacles
that crews face and know that the test application and interpretation
must be watertight.
Soon, Prof. Furlong and his team will start running the samples of crewmembers'
blood (presumably) exposed to engine oil to look for and quantify the
modified biomarker proteins in a real samples. Ultimately, they hope
to develop a procedure that will enable a lab to extrapolate back to
define the time of exposure to TCPs. They also hope to eventually develop
a simpler means for crewmembers to provide a blood sample to a lab,
such as a self-serve finger prick kit, and shipping sample on a filter
paper. Chain of custody issues will need to be addressed so that the
test results are defensible and the identify of the donor can be confirmed.
also of great help to affected crews.
Prof. Furlong and his team received some initial funding from our individual
members, as well as the Royal Australian Air Force. However, they have
been working around the clock for months, effectively for free, because
of the volume of associated work and the drive to finalize the blood
tests. We are urgently asking each union to please make another contribution.
When completed, this research will produce a practical deliverable that
will assist your individual members directly. It will also help us –
united – to put a stop to oil fumes in the cabin and flight deck. We
are getting this research at better than cost, but it is not fair to
expect these talented and dedicated researchers to work for free. Please
donate so that the tests can be a reality. Prof. Furlong’s team is continuing
to collect blood samples from affected crewmembers, so please let GCAQE
know about recently exposed individuals who would like to have their
blood stored and tested by his team.
Questions about the logistics of wiring a donation?
Please contact GCAQE’s Judith Murawski ( Judith@AFAseattle.org or +206-932-6237) or Tristan Loraine ( tristan@gcaqe.org or +1403-734-550).
In the past, individual unions have contributed $10,000 each. The remaining work is budgeted at approximately $200,000, but if we all pitch in, we can reach that goal.
