The leadoff witness for U.S. cigarette makers fighting a $5 billion secondhand-smoke case testified on Monday that airlines saved $100 million a year in fuel by cutting fresh air aboard American aircraft.
Lawyers pressing the anti-tobacco case claim that the cigarette smoke of passengers caused the lung cancer, emphysema and other illnesses of an estimated 60,000 flight attendants, but tobacco lawyers say the exposure to secondhand smoke aboard aircraft was trivial and that the flight attendants illnesses were caused by other factors.
Aviation consultant Martin Godley, an engineer trained at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, testified airlines began buying aircraft mixing recirculated air in passenger cabins with fresh air primarily after 1990, when in-flight smoking was banned on U.S. domestic flights.
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Before 1990, the dominant but costly technique for ventilating cabins brought in all fresh air and blew out stale air, Godley said.
Godley said fresh-air intake consumed enormous amounts of jet fuel and designers about seven years ago began supplying ventilation systems which mix recirculated air passed through filters with fresh air. He estimated fuel worth $100 million a year was saved by mixing fresh and filtered air. Other witnesses, testifying for the flight attendants in a trial now in its fourth month, said the closed cabins heightened the allegedly harmful effects of the chemicals and other pollutants in secondhand smoke.
Godley said under questioning by Walt Cofer, an attorney for Philip Morris Cos. Inc. and Lorrillard, that air in jet cabins was recirculated very frequently.
Lorrillard is a division of Loe ws Corp. Godley estimated, after using a computer-generated video to describe the ventilation system of a Boeing 757, that the air moving in and out of a jet cabin during flight changed at 45 times the rate of the air of a typical home.
He also testified that such systems do little to screen out other possible pollutants such as stepped-up levels of ozone, a naturally occuring carcinogen which may enter jets at high altitudes, and cosmic radiation. Both may have contributed to the flight attendants illnesses, tobacco lawyers have said.
Stanley Rosenblatt, an attorney for the flight attendants, clashed repeatedly with tobacco attorneys during his cross examination of Godley and questioned the consultant for Sinat, Helliesene & Eichner (SH&E) about the residues found on air exhaust valves.
Godley acknowledged that a thick, gummy residue was found in heavier concentrations by mainentance crews in the 1980s, before the ban went into effect, than now. Rosenblatt suggested the residue contained tar from cigarettes but Godley said he did not know the composition of the residue.
Another witness for the tobacco industry, occupational safety expert Yolanda Janczenski, testified that a study of cabin air pollutants she conducted in 1994 showed no meaningful differences from similar studies done when smoking was allowed on passenger jets.
We ended up with the same numbers as everyone else, Janczenski said.
The trial judge, Robert Kaye of Dade County Circuit Court, blocked much of Janczenskis proposed testimony in a loud, angry exchange with tobacco lawyers. The tobacco lawyers had proposed she testify about a survey in 1994 she conducted of airline companies and unions about increasing complaints about cabin air quality after the smoking ban.
Such evidence would bolster the cigarette makers defense that pollutants other than tobacco smoke caused the flight attendants illnesses but Kaye agreed with Rosenblatts objections that the survey was far from scientifically grounded.
I listened to her and it doesnt satisfy me. I dont think there is any scientific evidence to go on, Kaye said.
Lawyers for the five tobacco companies and two trade groups fighting the lawsuit, the first-ever class action against cigarette makers to come to trial, were scheduled to continue questioning Janczenski on Tuesday.