Does Fresh Air Help?
Can we be sure that more fresh air ventilation on airliners would reduce disease transmission? One office building study of tuberculosis suggests that it might. The Massachusetts Department of Public Health studied the ventilation in an office building in which 40 percent of the workers had been infected with tuberculosis by co-workers. The study estimated that if the ventilation rate had been doubled the number infected would have been cut by 50 percent. But San Diego research architect Hal Levin noted that the disease transmission problem on aircraft may not be that simple. In a crowded cabin, he said, it would not be practical to provide enough fresh air flow to protect passengers from the cough or sneeze nearby without creating an unacceptable draft. His thought: instead of blowing air down on passengers and across the seats to the exhaust ducts on the floor at cabin wall, the ventilation pattern should be reversed. If ceiling ducts sucked the air out of the cabin instead of blowin
