home page

A cloud of insecticide containing DDT descends on passengers in this circa 1955 photo.  Although banned in the US in 1972, DDT was sprayed in US aircraft until 1989.

Flying in the mist Buzzworm's Earth Journal, November, 1993 by Linda and Bill Bonvie                   Vol. 6 ; No. 1 ; Pg. 38; ISSN: 1073-5852

It was to have been the start of a carefree Caribbean vacation. But as Julia Kendall's flight from Miami to St. Martin began its descent, she noticed a flight attendant walking down the aisle, waving her arm back and forth. Suddenly, Kendall began coughing and having trouble breathing. Desperate to leave as soon as the plane landed, Kendall scrambled for the exit, but was forced back by a flight attendant. Finally off the plane, she was left suffering with a throbbing head, aching joints, swollen lymph glands and chills. Days later, her blood tests revealed an alarmingly elevated white blood celt count, which her doctor attributed to pesticide exposure.

What happened to Kendall on October 22, 1992, and her subsequent attempts to make sense of it, reads like a bizarre Franz Kafka tale of bureaucracy gone haywire. The San Rafael, California, resident, who had been diagnosed with leukemia after having been exposed to the pesticide malathion two years earlier, was traveling to the tropical island in order to relax and, in her own words, to "detox." The trip turned out to have quite the opposite effect.
 

The flight attendant who sprayed the pesticide, the pilot and the ground employees "all insisted the government required the spraying.  'It's the law,' each one repeated.  Which government?  No one was sure."

Ever since air travel went international in the 1930s, there has been concern about the possibility of disease-bearing insects being spread from one locale to another. To keep such alien insect "vectors" from entering their borders as stowaways on aircraft, many countries, particularly those in the Caribbean, Latin America and the South Pacific--including Australia and New Zealand--require the spraying of chemical pesticides on international flights.

The US once engaged in similar "disinsection" even on domestic flights, but stopped more than ten years ago when its own health officials determined that the practice was neither safe nor effective. Australia, on the other hand, which is surrounded by malaria-infested countries, continues to support chemical disinsection. The airlines comply with the rules of whatever country to which they are flying. And the passengers? They usually remain ignorant of the whole controversy, as the one thing that seems to have been agreed upon is that it is not necessary to tell passengers about the use of chemical pesticides on board and the possible health risks.

What the flight attendant on Kendall's American Airlines flight had been spraying without warning at passenger face level was a can of insecticide. When Kendall tried to get an explanation for this incident and information on how to avoid such an unexpected chemical assaults in the future, she found herself in a maddening runaround.

As she recounted, the flight attendant who sprayed the pesticide, the pilot and the ground employees all insisted the government required the spraying. 'It's the law,' each one repeated. Which government? No one was sure. When she asked the pilot why she hadn't been given notice of the spraying so she could have taken precautions such as putting on a respirator and covering herself with a blanket, he said no one had thought about it. "We have to spray, so why announce it?" he said.

Eventually, Kendall found bits and pieces of the answers she sought. She received a letter from an airline spokes-person that briefly described the types of procedures used to disinsect aircraft and which indicated that they were a result of "individual country requirements." She also discovered she was not the only person who had been seriously affected by such practices.
 

"We have to spray, so why announce it?"

She finally learned the identity of the substance the flight attendant had been spraying: Airosol Aircraft Insecticide, a product formulated by the Airosol Company in Neodesha, Kansas, and whose active ingredient, d-phenothrin (trade name: Sumithrin), could cause allergic reactions despite its rapid breakdown, according to a pesticide expert she spoke with at the National Pesticide Telecommunications Network. What shocked the pesticide expert, however, was one further discovery. Airosol Aircraft Insecticide was the alias for another product manufactured by this same Kansas-based company--one named Black Knight Roach Killer.

The chemical that had such a horrendous effect on Julia Kendall is neither the first nor necessarily the worst such toxin to be routinely used to disinsect the passenger cabins of commercial airliners. Other pesticides, now known to pose considerable long-term health risks, preceded it in this capacity. One was DDT, whose use was allowed on airplanes up to 1989, and which was routinely sprayed on thousands of US domestic flights in the 1960s and 1970s.

Shouldn't travelers be forewarned that in the course of flying to certain destinations, they will be directly exposed to a shower of Airosol Aircraft Insecticide, a.k.a. Black Knight Roach Killer? Not according to Captain Ed Soliday, Director of Corporate Safety for United Airlines. "When you have something with the level of toxicity that this has ... what all do you want us to warn them of?" Soliday asked. It would be like warning people "that we serve bay leaf in some of our food," Soliday said. "I mean, some people are allergic to certain foods."

Yet the manufacturer's own label and instructions suggest this product could cause more harm than an occasional allergic reaction. The Airosol Aircraft Insecticide label describes it as a "hazard to humans and domestic animals" that can be harmful if absorbed through the skin, and warns against breathing its vapors of having it come into contact with skin or eyes. It also urges that pets and birds be removed before spraying, that food-contact surfaces be washed with an "effective cleaning compound" afterward, and when it is used in buildings, vans, ships and tentages, the user is advised to "ventilate area before re-entry."

 

"There are a lot of square pegs that don't fit in round holes.... Yes, it's confusing; yes, it's conflicting." Richard King, EPA

In direct contrast, for airplane application, the label says the product should be  used "at least 30 minutes prior to landing," be sprayed in "all spaces within the  aircraft after loading is completed, crew and passengers on board and all doors, hatches and ventilation openings are closed," and that the plane's ventilation  system be stopped "for a period of not less than three minutes before spraying."  Why the discrepancy?

"You've got me on that one," replied Richard King, the chemical review manager at the EPA's Office of Pesticides and Toxic Substances. "You've got us over a barrel.... There are a lot of square pegs that don't fit in round holes.... Yes, it's confusing; yes, it's conflicting."

When Joe Tavano, the EPA's product manager for this particular pesticide, was made aware of the conflicts in the product's instructions and warnings, he demanded additional acute toxicity data from the manufacturer on which to base a new decision regarding its continued use on aircraft, saying: "You could not avoid breathing the vapors or getting the product on the skin or in the eyes when the product is used in this manner."

Yet according to United Airlines inflight service regulations, employees need not try to explain these contradictions. "Prior to beginning the spraying of the cabin," the regulation sheet reads, "the CP (captain) should make the Aircraft Disinsection Announcement.... F/A (flight attendant) should reassure passengers that the spray contains no chemicals that are harmful to humans."
 

"How could any airline spray people?"  It took a second supervisor to clarify that, in fact, that is exactly what they do.

The misinformation given to passengers regarding disinsection is so pervasive that it is difficult even to determine in advance whether a plane is to be sprayed. Many airline employees themselves seem unaware of the practice. An Air Jamaica agent contacted through the toll-free reservation number had never heard of the procedure, although a supervisor acknowledged that, "yes, they do spray the inside of the aircraft," but only
"after the passengers are off.... How could any airline spray people?" It took a second supervisor to clarify that, in fact, that is exactly what they do.

A reservations agent for American Airlines, when asked whether spraying took place, said
"I've never heard of that--we don't do it." Taking the question to the executive offices of the airline produced another misleading reply. When first contacted, American Airlines Communications representative Joe Crawley said, "I've been all over the world, and I've never been sprayed on a first-class airline."  He also said the routes where any pesticides are used on board an aircraft were so "few and far between" that he didn't even know if he could identify them.

Crawley's position had changed somewhat when he called back the next day. This time, there were "too many (destinations) to make a list," and he referred to the pesticide as something used to "control germs. The cabin must be sprayed before the door is opened--that is the law. No exemptions."

As chairperson of the Air/Safety Health Committee of United's Association of Flight Attendants, Fidel Gonzales regards this failure to provide passengers with accurate information as irresponsible. "People have a right to know ... they are going to be sprayed. It should be on the ticket ... or (in) an advance statement." He also finds it disturbing that flight attendants on some international routes must assume the duties of exterminators.

So does Diana Fairechild, a former flight attendant and author of Jet Smart, a book of air travel tips. After 21 years of circling the globe, she is now permanently "medically grounded," a result of acute environmental sensitivity which she says her doctor blames on pesticide exposure. Fairechild focuses mainly on what she terms the "toxic shower" given to passengers traveling to Australia and New Zealand, the latter country having been one of her regular destinations.

She describes the procedure used before disembarkation there as one that "saturates clothes and hair and soaks into skin, so it's really a matter of hours before we're pesticide-free."

While Fairechild does offer some ways that people who are chemically sensitive, asthmatic or pregnant can avoid the pesticide saturation, such as obtaining a doctor's note beforehand and using it to leave the plane immediately, even these means escape may no longer be viable. According to the latest reports from United Airlines and Continental Airlines, which both offer flights to New Zealand and Australia, disinsection procedures on the ground there have recently been replaced by the same kind of "top-of-descent" spraying that Julia Kendall and others have encountered on flights to the Caribbean.

The section of Fairechild's book dealing with this situation bears the subhead "KILLER MIST."  That may sound like hyperbole until one hears author Mollie Gillen's story, described in the acknowledgements of her book Founders of Australia: "Traveling with me to Australia from London in July 1983 ... my husband died the day we landed at Sydney, after having been refused permission to disembark before the aircraft was sprayed with insecticide."

Aircraft disinsection is one of the major concerns of the Australian Chemical Trauma Alliance, of which Diana F. Crumpler serves as coordinator for the state of Victoria. One reason the group finds aircraft disinsection infuriating is because it prevents chemically sensitive people from leaving the country for fear of a severe chemical reaction on returning to Australia. In Crumpler's view, Australia "is, in many ways, distinctly Third World in its attitude toward chemical issues" and extremely lax about allowing its citizens to be exposed to dangerous pesticides in general.

Who initiated these pesticide applications, and who is responsible for the results of this practice? Not the airlines--they say it is required of them by the governments of various countries. But while authorities in those countries may be ordering the procedure, they are also acting on the recommendations of a United Nations affiliate, the World Health Organization WHO).

WHO sanctions both the practice of spraying and the d-phenothrin-based aerosol used in recent years to implement it. WHO's stated rationale for the procedure in one report is that "there is abundant evidence that harmful insects can be carried on aircraft, and there are documented cases which indicate that harmful insects have been introduced to new areas by this means. In many instances these species have become established."  Appendix II of the report provides various specific instances of "mosquitoes introduced and established in countries through international transportation"; from the 1930s through 1982.

Aircraft was definitely established as the means of transport in only nine of the 29 cases, however, and nowhere are there examples of mosquitoes having been introduced to a new locale via aircraft from the US, or any other non-tropical habitat, for that matter. Yet this WHO-sanctioned insecticide shower is almost always reserved for people traveling from temperate locales into tropical or subtropical ones, where exotic insect life is far more likely to flourish; going the other way, it is noticeably absent.

D-phenothrin is not the first pesticide given a green light by WHO. A 1965 WHO report endorsing the insecticide dichlorvos states that "extensive toxicological studies with human volunteers have shown that (disinsection with dichlorvos) is safe to passengers and crew, even though they may be repeatedly exposed to the vapors on flights with numerous international stops."  Nor were such studies limited to volunteers. In June 1964, for instance, an automatic disinsection system was reportedly installed in a Boeing 720 jet assigned to passenger service between the US, Mexico and Central and South America, passengers being "completely unaware that such an operation was in progress."

Dichlorvos, or DDVP, has since been identified by the EPA as carrying an exceptionally high cancer risk. Studies have also linked it to nerve and liver damage and to childhood leukemia and aplastic anemia.

In a 1984 WHO disinsection report, one of the substances still given the organization's seal of approval for aircraft use was DDT, a chemical banned in the US in 1972. DDT has recently been linked to an increased incidence of breast cancer among women with residues of the pesticide remaining in their blood.

One might assume that DDT has been thoroughly discredited by now--but this is not the case, according to Dr. P. de Raadt, director of WHO's division of Control of Tropical Diseases in Geneva. He states that while WHO wants to abolish DDT for agriculture, it still accepts DDT as an insecticide that can be used indoors in the proper dosage and with the proper application technique.

It was the use of DDT in formulation with the pesticide Sevin to disinsect thousands of domestic commercial aircraft in the US for Japanese beetles that prompted the Association of Flight Attendants to bring a civil suit against the Secretary of Agriculture in 1977. According to the brief filed in that action, such a procedure had been periodically implemented since 1963. But the defendant had "never formally disclosed to the public the program's existence," despite having "received numerous warnings from medical experts that the use of DDT in airplanes is extremely hazardous to human health and is likely to cause severe allergic and toxic reactions in many airline passengers and employees."

The lawsuit was dropped when the USDA agreed to stop using the DDT/Sevin formula in favor of d-phenothrin, which was registered with the EPA for the purpose of aircraft disinsection in 1979. (It wasn't until 1989, however, that the special USDA exemption to use DDT was voluntarily withdrawn by the agency, and no one contacted in the USDA could recall the actual date of the last DDT use.) While d-phenothrin is used at "regulated"airports (any airport where Japanese-beetle populations reach certain levels, which included the Philadelphia and Louisville, Kentucky, airports last year), it is now mostly applied to cargo planes, since passenger planes are considered low-risk for Japanese beetles.

The use of pesticides on passenger planes inside the US and in flights coming into the country has dramatically decreased, partly due to the recognition by health officials that chemical insecticides are dangerous in this setting. In 1979, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) of the US Department of Health and Human Services lifted a quarantine requirement for the routine disinsection of planes--with everybody aboard--arriving in parts of the southern US from foreign countries located within tropical or subtropical latitudes. This action was taken because "the insecticidal formulations containing pyrethrin ... currently used to disinsect aircraft cause undue discomfort to many passengers and, in some cases, place those exposed at risk of developing acute allergic (anaphylactic) reactions." This circumstance caused personnel to minimize the dosage and thus render the "efficacy of the entire procedure ... questionable."

While the CDC reserved the right to require spraying for any aircraft arriving in a US-controlled airport from "a foreign area that is infected with an insect-borne communicable disease," it was to be allowed only after all passengers and crew members had deplaned.
 

"the U.S. cannot support the use of insecticides in aircraft areas with passengers present. Pesticides registered for such use should not be inhaled. In effect, the safety issue precludes a U.S. requirement for disinsection."  Assistant Surgeon General Donald R. Hopkins, 1983

Furthermore, according to Terry Mcgovern of the USDA's Plant Protection and Quarantine Domestic and Emergency Operations, whenever a plane is now sprayed with  d-phenothrin at a US airport, it must be vented for 15 minutes before the flight crew is permitted to board, and the applicator "must wear eye goggles and maybe other safety equipment" in compliance with USDA regulations. When asked whether d-phenothrin might ever be used while other people are on board, he replied, "We don't want anyone passing out."

A 1983 memo from Assistant Surgeon General Donald R. Hopkins regarding the CDC position on insect control in international sea and air travel notes that "the US cannot support the use of insecticides in aircraft areas with passengers present. Pesticides registered for such use should not be inhaled. In effect, the safety issue precludes a US requirement for disinsection."

The memo goes on to claim that "disinsection of aircraft has never been shown to be highly effective in disease control or in species containment," recommending instead that vector control efforts be concentrated "in and around airports and seaports."

Such policies might protect passengers flying into and throughout the US from pesticide spraying, but there is no such protection for Americans leaving the country, even if they are flying on an American-owned airline and might be expecting American health and safety practices. Instead, passengers become subject to the rules of their destination country, and the guidelines of WHO.

Although WHO has not gone as far as the CDC in recognizing the risks of disinsection, it hasn't been oblivious to negative reactions to d-phenothrin spraying. It has approved the use of permethrin--which is now used by several airlines that fly to the Southern Hemisphere--for "residual spraying" without passengers or crew on board. According to a 1985 WHO bulletin, this treatment has been effective against insects while decreasing adverse effects in humans.
 

But does the U.S. pose any risk of transporting vector-borne disease to a country like Australia?  "Absolutely not," according to Dr. de Raadt, who says that WHO's policy entails a "worldwide approach" to the issue.

While airlines such as Air New Zealand and Qantas appear to have eagerly made the switch to permethrin (also a synthetic pyrethroid), whose applications and residue are a secret to most of their passengers, US airlines have not. As the active ingredient in several termite-killing products applied to homes, permethrin was the subject of controversy within the EPA, which finally listed it as a Class C substance, or possible human carcinogen. And while the EPA will allow the use of permethrin in aircraft at 0.5 percent, WHO's recommendation for "safe and effective" use is 2 percent, a concentration four times higher than the EPA will permit.

Dr. de Raadt of WHO calls it "a matter of weighing risks" when there's "a very small, practically negligible risk for the use of a pharmaceutical or an insecticide and ... a very high risk of the effect of disease which you can prevent by such use." But does the US pose any risk of transporting vector-borne disease to a country like Australia?
"Absolutely not," according to Dr. de Raadt, who says that WHO's policy entails a "worldwide approach" to the issue.

Given that approach, passengers headed for foreign lands or tropical paradises, especially those people who might have a history of chemical-related problems, allergies or respiratory ailments, should try to limit their degree of risk from pesticide exposure. Dr. Marc Goldstein, an associate professor of clinical medicine and pediatrics at Philadelphia's Hahnemann University School of Medicine, advises individuals with respiratory ailments to try to avoid flights designated for disinsection and, if they must go, to use a respirator mask that filters particulates. Taking asthma meditation beforehand is also wise.

Dr. Goldstein, who finds it "really appalling" that planes are disinsected with no prior notification to passengers, contends that "if you give a toxic aerosol to a person with normal lung function, they're going to have a reaction ... and certainly people who have irritable airways will have problems with substantially smaller doses."

For the chemically sensitive, the skies above the US are now a lot friendlier than they were a few years ago. Once having ventured beyond them, however, the general rule still seems to be: Let the flier beware.