Ozone interactions

That sick feeling you may experience after a long airplane flight is not all in your head. But your head -- or more precisely, your scalp -- may be contributing to it.

American and Danish experts in environmental health recently exposed 16 research subjects to four-hour mock flights, complete with the kind of elevated ozone levels typically found in many aircraft. They found that the interaction of high ozone concentrations with oils on passengers’ skin, hair and clothing produces a compound suspected of irritating nasal passages, drying out eyes and lips, and causing headaches. The offending byproducts of this interaction -- nonanal and decanal -- belong to the aldehyde family of compounds, which appear to be the culprits in workplaces stricken with “sick building syndrome.”

Because passengers aren’t likely to stop secreting oils -- and leaving them on headrests and seats -- the finding underscores the importance of equipping the ventilation systems of all planes that make longer trips with ozone-destroying catalysts.

The research, co-written by UC Berkeley’s William Nazaroff, is published in the Sept. 1 issue of the American Chemical Society journal Environmental Science and Technology.