By Dr. Matsen
Perhaps you’ve noticed that many of your friends, relatives, neighbours and workmates have chronic health problems, often regardless of their age, but sometimes connected to their occupation. Nurses, for example, at the hub of health care, have a ten percent long-term disability rate. Nurses’ exposure to infectious disease agents and their lifting of heavy bodies have been the primary suspects for their high rate of disability, though recent admission that their mandatory hepatitis B and flu shots contained 20 micrograms of ethyl mercury may prove to be even more relevant.
Fifty percent of flight attendants book off sick at least two weeks per year and they also have twice the long-term disability rate of nurses, without the lifting or vaccine exposure. However, like nurses, flight attendants are exposed to infectious diseases. In her thoroughly documented book, Broken Wings, ex flight attendant Nattanya Andersen quotes Harvard Professor of Environmental Health, Dr Harriet Burge: “There are many episodes of infectious diseases that could, if you took the trouble, be directly traced to travel on aircraft. It is also possible that if someone on the flight has an active case of an infectious disease like influenza, then other people on-board will also have that disease by the end of the flight.”
This is why I have long recommended that patients take propolis before, during, and after a flight because of its direct anti-viral properties. However, cold and flu viruses aren’t the only diseases spread from passengers to flight attendants (and perhaps vice versa) as tuberculosis and measles have also been documented to have spread on airplanes. It’s been proposed that the air in the plane is the root of the problem and author Andersen quotes Witkowski of the American Flight Attendant Union: “When we had planes—most planes—with 100% fresh air, the air used to come in totally…almost totally clean and then be exhausted every three minutes. Today, with the 50% fresh air and 50% recycled air, the plane isn’t changed—completely changed until approximately seven minutes or even longer in some cases. So you have air that’s less…has less quality to begin with. It’s got more contaminants and it stays in the plane longer.”
A Harvard research team, commissioned by the American Broadcasting Company, found airplanes’ air contaminants to include not only microorganisms such as viruses and bacteria, but high levels of dust mites as well. The researchers also found carbon dioxide and aromas from perfumes, aftershaves, cooking, fuel, de-icing chemicals, cleaning fluids, carpeting adhesives, upholstery finishes, ethanol, benzene, and pesticides. Any of these are capable of triggering allergy or asthma attacks in sensitive individuals.
Engineers have added filters to some planes’ air recirculation systems that can now remove up to 99.99% of airborne contaminants larger than 0.5 microns. The problem is that most common cold, flu and pneumonia viruses are smaller than this, so they aren’t effectively dealt with by filtration.
Inventor Guy Cramer of Hyperstealth Biotechnologies in Vancouver, Canada, believes that researchers are still on the wrong track with air treatment systems, not only on airplanes but also in cruise ships, hotels, office buildings, cars, homes, and even space capsules. He believes that the metal ducting in air conditioning, heating systems, and oxygen storage systems strips the negative ions from the air, leaving mainly positive ions. It has been proposed that white blood cells, which are the key to your immune system, pick up the negative charge from negative ions at your lungs and are thus “charged up” and ready to attack microorganism invaders. With the negative ions stripped out of the man-made air, it leaves us much more vulnerable to viral attacks. Thus, by the end of a long plane trip (or cruise, etc.) passengers can leave with everyone else’s viruses. Cramer has invented a device to turn air treatment systems into negative ion generators, which could rectify the problem. His invention is presently under investigation by NASA.
While chronic viral infections might be common to air travelers, it is unlikely that this alone is the root of the high levels of chronically disabled flight attendants. There are other factors, such as exposure to high altitude radiation and frequent time zone changes, which have to be considered, though these would be difficult to change. However, there is a potential cause that could be readily changed and that is exposure to insecticides.
After it was documented years ago that commercial aircraft traveling to Europe from tropical countries had transported malaria-carrying mosquitoes, it became a mandatory practice in eighteen countries to spray planes leaving tropical countries with insecticides. This became known as disinsection and the insecticide first chosen was pyrethrum, a natural insecticide extracted from chrysanthemum flowers and generally considered harmless to humans.
However, the insecticides used on airplanes today are synthetic versions called pyrethroids. The World Health Organization states: “Given the understanding of the mode of action of pyrethroids and low exposure from aircraft disinsection it is unlikely that this procedure will precipitate or influence any pre-existing disease in passengers or crew.” This broad acceptance of synthetic pyrethroids has been proven wrong by a recent investigation into acute illness in flight attendants following exposure to pyrethroids. The State of California’s Department of Health Services published its results on October 23, 2003, after investigating 12 flight attendants reporting acute illness following work exposure to pyrethroids. They concluded: “…one or both of the WHO’s assumptions about the human health impacts of residual disinsection are not valid.”
The California Department of Health study went on to conclude: “There is documentation in the literature of acute illness following human exposure to permethrin (a synthetic pyrethroid).” “The signs and symptoms of exposure to permethrin include irritation of the eyes and upper respiratory tract, and irritation, burning, and itching of the skin, and urticaria. Exposure to synthetic pyrethroids can cause abnormal sensations on exposed skin, contact dermatitis, dizziness, nausea, anorexia, fatigue, mild disturbances of consciousness, muscular fasciculations, and at high doses, pulmonary edema, convulsions, and coma.”
Synthetic pyrethroids are also used widely in home insecticides for killing a wide range of bugs, from wasps and hornets to ants, ticks, roaches, fleas, mosquitoes, etc. A study by H. Muller-Mohnssen published in Toxicology Letters (1999, Volume 107: pages 161-175) looked at home exposure to synthetic pyrethroids as the likely cause of the dramatic increase in multiple chemical sensitivities in Germany in the last ten years. Muller-Mohnssen states: “In the cases of the author’s observation this disease began with a high-dose exposure to pyrethroid insecticides with clinical signs of intoxication. In most of these cases the neurotoxic syndrome is followed by an intolerance of chemicals with an interval of 2-4 months…and then the intolerance subsides very slowly.”
Muller-Mohnssen states that the individual is then left hypersensitive to many chemicals and “the hypersensitivity is triggered by minute levels …which do not cause any sensations in the general population.” He goes on to point out that in 1999, the number of hypersensitive individuals added up to over half of the urban population of Germany.
Muller-Mohnssen sums up that the basic therapy is “elimination of the causative agent” which means stopping the use of synthetic pyrethroids in the home. The use of pyrethroids in airplanes will be more difficult to stop though apparently, since the insects travel mainly in the baggage compartment, the use of toxic chemicals in the passenger compartment may be an unnecessary overkill.
For those already sensitive to chemicals, it’s crucial to avoid any planes that have been sprayed with synthetic pyrethroids and the only way to know for sure is to ask the airline. For those who are still healthy and about to undergo a trip that might include exposure, it would be important to begin a detoxification program at least three days before the flight (longer would be better). Taking milk thistle herb extract (at least 250 mg per day) and selenium (200 mcg per day) would be a good starting point. German studies showed that when rats were given poison and milk thistle herb at the same time, all the rats died. However, if the rats were given milk thistle three days before being given the poison, they survived the poisoning. This shows that it takes at least three days for milk thistle to activate the liver’s defenses against a toxic exposure.
Until the use of synthetic pyrethroids is banned, keep an eye on your flight attendants, as they are the canaries in the modern mineshafts called airplanes.