Passenger reveals shockingly dirty air in Air New Zealand cabin

An air passenger recently took a portable CO2 meter aboard an Air New Zealand flight to demonstrate the shockingly high levels of recycled breath in air cabins.

The reading aboard the Monday Service from Christchurch to Wellington clocked 1900 parts per million of exhaled CO2. This is twice the safe ventilation outlined by New Zealand’s public health measures. At 36 per cent humidity they were concerned about spending the 55m journey breathing other passenger’s “backwash”.

“If @FlyAirNZ are suffering because of staff sickness, might I respectfully point out that flying us all around in a C02 covid soup is probs a contributing factor that you CAN do something about!” tweeted Ripeka123.

The airline says it has been struggling to fill staffing quotas due to staff sickness levels.

Portable Carbon Dioxide readers have been used throughout the Covid 19 pandemic. They became an important public health tool to determine the appropriate ventilation of an area to minimise the chance of passing infection via moisture droplets in the air.

However, poor ventilation and high CO2 has public health implications beyond hygiene.

CO2 Meter suppliers Aranet said that high levels of carbon dioxide can seriously affect “cognitive abilities and general wellbeing” leaving people drowsy and starved of oxygen. A Harvard study into air quality found that levels above 1400 ppm were shown to drop cognitive abilities by as much as 50 per cent.

“I was expecting elevated reading for that reason but it surprised me,” said Ripeka.

“Covid aside, it’s not ok to be in such high concentrations of C02 for extended periods of time.”

How clean is the air in your plane cabin?

Early on in the pandemic IATA released a statement that risk of covid transmission for air passengers was “very low”. Thanks to HEPA (High-efficiency Particulate Air) filters, the ventilation recycled in most air cabins is cleaned to hospital grade, said the International Air Transport Authority in August 2020.

However not all planes have these filters. Air New Zealand’s regional link aircraft like the ATR turboprops which serve the CHC WLG route do not have HEPA filters as standard.

Last year a solution was created by the European aerospace company to refit turboprop fleets with filters to counter the risk of midair transmission. However few have made the conversion.

Breath backwash

This month Radio New Zealand released a report on the dirtiest air in public spaces around New Zealand.

Carbon dioxide is expelled when people breathe, making it a good indicator of the amount of shared breath (or “breath backwash”) each person in a space is inhaling.

Government standards give safe air quality at under 800 parts per million of carbon dioxide for offices and schools.

AUT aerosol chemist Dr Joel Rindelaub says that anything above 1000ppm brings a high risk of Covid-19 transmission if someone in the space has the disease.

“If you’re above 2000, then that’s a huge red flag,” he said.

Air New Zealand’s 1900 ppm reading was an alarming score. However it was not the worst when compared to other types of transport or activity, exposed by RNZ.

Bars and cafes in the study recorded a median reading of 1233ppm with 91 per cent of spaces below safe ventilation levels.

Meanwhile public transport such as taxis and buses averaged 2458ppm or one in eight breaths being co-passenger backwash.

The airline has been contacted with regards to the reading.