HIGH FLYING

Otago Daily Times, Issue 22710, 24 October 1935, Page 13

HIGH FLYING

ALTITUDE EFFECTS REACTIONS ON INDIVIDUALS SUBJECT FOE SCIENTIFIC STUDY. With the growing tendency toward higher altitudes for passenger flying on air lines and increasing interest in substratosphere ocean flying, the importance of a basic study of the physiological effects of rarefied atmosphere on air travellers has become evident, according to Professor Yandell Henderson. Professor Henderson, head of the department of physiology at the Yale Medical School and widely known authority on asphyxia, pointed out recently that the comfort as well as the physical well-being of those who ride above middle altitudes of, say, 10,000 feet might now well become the subject of scientific research. " Studies of the effects of altitudes which I have made at high mountain stations, including Pike's Peak," he said, "have made it clear that individuals show very "marked differences in their tolerance of oxygen deficiency. While an aeroplane flight is seldom, or perhaps never, long enough, under present conditions, .to bring about acclimatisation to marked change of altitude in the individual on the particular flight, it may be that pilots accustomed to going into the higher levels will develop a tolerance. This, however, is but one of the many facts which should be definitely established." APPARATUS FOR "EQUALISING." Emphasising that any relative figures given now were purely by way of illustration, Professor Henderson said that apparently no special apparatus would be required up to levels of about 10,000 feet. But, he added, that for safety's sake, it might well prove that oxygan apparatus would be required between, say, 10,000 and 20,000 feet, while above that altitude some means of equalising pressures, such as the supercharged or sealed cabin, might be necessary. _ The comments of the specialist m asphyxia, whose basic methods wercused by Dr Dafoe in keeping alive the Dionne quintuplets in their early hours, were elicited by a visit of Major Lester

Gardner, secretary of the Institute of the Aeronautical Sciences, to enlist his interest in the specific problems of high altitude flight. Professor Henderson indicated that the reactions of individuals to diminished oxygen supply could not be predicted without test. " In some persons," he said, " the effect is immediate and intense. Nausea, headache and considerable prostration may occur. In others the effects may be slight or may only appear some time after the normal oxygen supply has been restored —in the case of flying —after descent has been made to lower levels. Some persons do not realise that they are being affected durjng the process. "The rarefied air at levels of 14,000 to 16,000 feet or so makes certain individuals very fault-finding and cranky; a condition which may not make its appearance at once or only after the lapse of several hours." In this connection Major Gardner pointed out that complaints of service or even of trivialities which have been received by some air lines from passengers taken high aloft, partly to assure them a smoother ride above the normal levels of storm and turbulence, might be due to this after-effect of oxygen deficiency and not to any actual faults in the service itself. PRESSURE CHAMBER TESTS. In addition to inconveniences which, in extreme cases, it was pointed out, might amount to serious illness, due to lack of sufficient oxygen at high altitudes, complaints in relation to high altitude Hying have come recently to the air lines because of extreme discomfort in the ears and sinuses due to rapid ascent or descent between the levels. That these physiological effects of .travelling several miles on the air should also be the subject of immediate research, Dr Henderson agreed. He added that Dr Karl Compton,- president of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, was in hopes that a laboratory for the study of various phenomena of altitude might be established _ this year through the generosity of a citizen of Colorado, high in the Colorado Rockies. On the part of the institute, an effort will at once be made to enlist the interest of the air lines and the army and navy air services in further study of the entire problem, which aviation experts believe to be reaching a stage where competent research and advice from the physiological point of view is imperative.