The airlines stopped pumping exhaust into passenger compartments for a few years, but then everyone forgot about the whole thing. Now you get that good-old-fashioned jet-fuel eye sting again until you wash your face after the end of the flight.
On the bright side, I don't think there's been many studies showing the old results on studies of stewardesses transfer to today's flight attendants.
This is way off the mark.
All airliners except for the Boeing 787 [0] pressurise the cabin with bleed air. This is not "exhaust"; it's pressurised air extracted upstream from the combustion stage. There are certain situations where the engine may ingest its own exhaust, or the exhaust of an aircraft in front, or there may be an internal leak in the bleed system. All of these are unintended contamination of the bleed air, not a normal mode of operation. In addition, the compressors ahead of the bleed valves must be lubricated and it is possible for this lubricant to get into the air stream if maintenance (including cleaning) is not carried out properly.
There was no period of time where airlines stopped pressurising the cabin with bleed air. It is the only source available on all airliners except the Boeing 787, and pressurisation is not optional.
[0] The Boeing 787 uses electric compressors to provide cabin air. This avoids some of the risks (leaks inside the engine, for example), but does nothing to avoid others (ingestion of exhaust from the same aircraft in certain wind conditions or from the aircraft in front when taxiing, or lubricants from the compressors getting into the air stream). The compressors are located in the wing-to-body fairing so the possibility to ingest external contaminants is quite similar to in traditional bleed air systems. The most noticeable difference on the Boeing 787 is the higher cabin pressure (lower cabin altitude) and higher humidity, both of which are made possible by structural improvements including the use of composites. Similar improvements (lower cabin altitude and higher humidity) are also present on e.g. the Airbus A350 and A380, which nonetheless — like all other airliners except the 787 — use traditional bleed air for pressurisation.
Here's a pretty good paper surveying the root-causes for this issue – https://www.scirp.org/pdf/eng_2018041917372308.pdf
For those interested, further reading:
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fume_event
* Search https://avherald.com for "fume"
Exhaust and oil fumes both get into cabin air through non-normal situations. They’re not “pumped in by airlines”, and suggesting that they are (or that they stopped for a while and then started again thinking nobody would notice) is sensationalist drivel.
That's exactly the circumstance where the vents upstream of the jet engines are able to pull in the jet exhaust.
Every flight I've been on post-pandemic has pulled exhaust fumes into the cabin while waiting at the gate.
The patterns of whether and when ground AC is used haven’t really changed industry-wide at any recent time, and certainly not around the pandemic, so I don’t know where the idea of this “period of time” comes from.
Maybe your travel patterns changed, or the ground AC equipment availability/policies changed at your frequently-visited airports. Or maybe the aircraft you are flying on were parked during the pandemic and then the reactivation maintenance (esp. engine washes) was not thorough enough, causing fumes at startup.
If you do get in and back out, make sure to ground yourself by touching the bare metal of the pump itself before you grab the nozzle. It's not perfect, but it's much safer than not taking the time to ground at all.
Compared to all the other risks of cars and gasoline, the relative risk seems miniscule.
I'll note that in the state I live (MN) it's technically illegal to get back in your car while pumping (you have to be " in close attendance to the dispenser nozzle").
Would that little spark be enough to ignite the vapors? I have no earthly idea.
Yes.
> Gasoline...has a flashpoint of minus 43°C. Sparks and static electricity can easily ignite gasoline fumes.[0]
They couldn't do it and even when for the laughs they decided to blow it up with a match it still didn't ignite.
Probably best to not use entertainment shows as a metric for safety.
https://youtube.com/watch?v=FPKen4QwY7I
There is basically always wind where I live. The pumps shut off automatically. So I just turn the pump on and walk over to the curb, upwind from the fumes.
Washington seems more lax about it, in my experience.
Germany and Italy have the latches for sure.
And don't get me started on Brexit and BoJo the clown... I'm still angry about that to this day
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vehicle_emissions_control#Evap...
If these fumes really are so dangerous then I'm surprised there hasn't been some kind of class action lawsuit filed for workplace health and safety violations.
It's already absurd on its face that everywhere else in the country - or hell, in the _world_ - just lets people pump their own gas. Having gas station attendants in respirators in Oregon would just take it to a whole new level.
... not Japan. Or at least, not when I lived there. Maybe things have moved on.
ハイオクで満タンお願いします
I have been living in Japan for almost 5 years, and I usually pump my own gas. It depends on the gas station though, many (usually the small ones) are still full-service only.
Sample of countries that don't permit self-service gas: Mexico, including Belgium, Brazil, Chile, China, Egypt, India, Indonesia, Morocco, South Africa, Thailand, Turkey, and Uruguay. See https://itif.org/publications/2019/07/29/self-service-gas-in...
E.g. here is a random photo of a gas station. No room for an attendant:
https://www.google.be/maps/place/Esso+Express/@51.0211239,3....
If you got gas at one of those stations it is because it was open. being open cost an employee even when no one show up which in a sparsely populated area is usually. The only rational response is to limit hours. now you have a condition where people over a wide area are being blocked from being able to buy gas when ever they want like the people in the city who are preventing them just take for granted.
These paper cuts accumulate add in some divisive propaganda and here we are.
source: I'm one of those city folk now.
The only reason this passed at all is because of COVID. Gas stations are complaining pretty uniformly and quite loudly that they can't get their labor levels back to pre-COVID levels
But that would not be popular, and so the current staffing levels are also not popular, so there is finally sufficient political pressure to somewhat drop the gas station attendant requirement.
Let labor prices keep going up, and soon no gas station attendants will be required because voters will want cheaper gas prices more than they want someone to fill their gas.
Market rate changes for jobs and some corporations (and people) seem to think that people should take jobs as offered even when they’re bad. We have record low unemployment, yet companies that complain about labor levels are basically outing themselves as bad employers, for some definitions of bad (pay, safety, comfort, etc).
Businesses complaining about labor levels because they're too cheap to pay labor market rate and businesses complaining about laws which require them to hire employees at rates which the market will not bear are different. It is pretty clear the person I responded to thought the rate which would bring labor levels back up is not something which would be tolerated by the customers.
>>> Let labor prices keep going up, and soon no gas station attendants will be required because voters will want cheaper gas prices more than they want someone to fill their gas.
> yet companies that complain about labor levels are basically outing themselves as bad employers
Are they really bad employers when they are complaining about laws/regulation which require them to hire people for positions their customers won't pay for and do not need? I would imagine most gas stations would prefer to become completely self-serve. I don't see gas stations any place which does not require an employee to pump trying to hire people in any significant capacity to pump gas. I don't believe I've ever seen one. I don't see voters in Oregon tolerating the requirement for much longer if the market rate is above what they are willing to pay. Pushing to change laws to conform to a new reality is not a sign of "bad employers".
No. But we’re all part of the same set of laws. Maybe some laws should change with time, but lobbying for law changes because you’re a bad business isn’t great either.
They could raise prices in Oregon, or they could lower profit margins. Both are things that may help them pay a market-rate salary. Oil companies had record profits over the last year… so there was ample money to go towards salaries. They made about $1 per gallon in profits (in Oregon)… which is enough that each car fill up can almost pay a full hour of salary.
For context, they made about $0.07 in profits per gallon in Florida… by selling it at a lower cost with a smaller margin. So they could do it and stay in business.
These seem intuitively linked? If there's not enough labor to go around, more jobs will be pushed under the 'water level' where the value provided by them is less than the cost of the labor.
But saying “people don’t want to work” is false - we’re at a point in history where people have chosen to work more than any other point in history.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benzene#Component_of_gasoline
There have been many automotive enthusiasts who lived past median life expectancy and died of something other than cancer, and those are people who have likely been exposed to far more other solvents than the rest of the population.
This was my understanding and I agree it is bad reasoning. It might have created jobs, but certainly not good ones.
Sure there's plenty of uber eats driving jobs but this isn't exactly something you can raise a family with.
“Then instead of shovels, why don’t you give them spoons and create even more jobs?” Friedman inquired.
Feels like something he would say though, that's for sure. The ethos is right.
[0]: https://quoteinvestigator.com/2011/10/10/spoons-shovels/
That may have been one excuse, but as a long time Oregonian my recollection is that the real reason is voters have rejected it when it did come up for a vote. People liked the idea of citing in their car and letting someone else do the work.
> They intentionally kept the gas tax lower in the state so consumers didn't notice the price difference
I recall once reading that the cost of insurance on a self-service station isn't far off the cost of staff, and it's mostly a wash overall.
> waiting for the "service" could sometimes be longer than the fill-up itself.
These days, Costco runs a massively efficient assembly line fill-up procedure, and self-service might well be slower. At quieter stations that may not be true. Even then, it depends on if you can navigate around the cars that are just parked in front of a pump while they are shopping inside the convenience store.
I like that idea too. But I don't like the idea of forcing a human to do the work. I like the idea of legislating for standardized interfaces between gas pumps and gas doors on cars, such that it becomes possible to build "full service" robot gas stations.
I think the only reason this hasn't been pushed for, is that the automotive-sector companies with the robotics expertise are all electric-car companies. (Or hydrogen-fuel-cell car companies — lotta robotics people in that space.)
About once a year or so, I get a person at the pump behind me that is FURIOUS that I am pumping my own fuel, and start yelling at me. They ignore what I say, until the station employees confirm with them that yes, it is legal to pump your own Diesel in Oregon, just not gasoline, since gasoline is flambile. (the existing law is governed by the state fire marshall). They are usually grateful, since they are always down at least one attendent, and busy as heck.
If this were true, then there would be gas stations with attendants in the other 48 states.
(That, and some regulation around rental car companies charging a 2500% "convenience" junk fee for handling tolls.)
Is that so bad? Plenty of other countries use tax dollars to pay the poor to do busywork. And Oregon is an extremely rural state outside the Portland metro, with very little agriculture or industry outside of logging, so gas stations are most likely one of the few decent options available.
It might be nice to have somebody wash the windows and check the washer fluid level, but it's hardly essential.
We don't even need them to run the credit cards any more. It's so weird going to a station in New Jersey, handing the attendant your card, and having them slide it right on the pump, just as you would. (And yeah, I've avoided filling up in New Jersey for the same reason: it takes longer.)
Maybe this served a goal at some point, but technology seems to have vaporized whatever it could have ever served.
Not that gas stations in Oregon were doing any of this anyway, they were pumping gas and nothing else.
I used to change the oil on my cars myself. I've never even tried on my newest car.
But, I mean, every model is different.
(I know this because this is how we started to learn we were losing oil, somewhere. … and unlike the parent poster's suggestion that old cars did this after 10k miles … this was around 130k miles. This is but one car, though, I suppose.)
More often than not, its just a bunch of people standing around using their phones as they wait for fill ups to end and they meander between the cars. Its really poor service, honestly.
Not to mention, they have the auto refund of the surplus, which is kinda silly, because what you'd want the state to do is setup a rainy day fund that can be safely invested for future endeavors, but no, the legislative body of 1979 made it so that if the state runs a surplus they allow everyone to get a tax "kicker"[0] instead, which is pretty short sighted IMO. Not to mention, the amount after being spread out across all of Oregons tax paying base, is really small and makes hardly a difference for the average person.
[0]: https://www.kgw.com/article/news/local/the-story/oregon-kick...
The bigger problem in Oregon government is the fact that our municipalities fail to do basic planning for their initiatives, so there'll be a surplus in one category and a deficit in another. This, I imagine, is where their slush fund could come in handy.
Lastly, we have a lot of corruption in this state which should be a higher priority to deal with. I was shocked in the Fagan case when I learned that we don't have anti-corruption laws to charge something as brazen as what she did.
I’d probably check someone’s oil about once an hour, but we washed windshields by default. It was before “pay at the pump”, so I spent a lot of my time walking credit cards in and out of the store to run them. It was actually a fun summer job for a high school kid.
A few summers later, I got a software internship at that oil company’s headquarters, working on a Visual Basic app for the pricing department to set prices at all of their stations. I’d often complete my week’s work by Monday afternoon and spend the rest of the week in their library, learning about all sorts of new technology. They treated me well and I was fortunate they didn’t offer me a full-time job at the end of my internship, because I likely would’ve taken it.
When I’ve filled up in Oregon, I’ve not seen them do anything but pump gas. During the pandemic, I drove through Oregon many times and learned to get gas before entering the state.
Also because they would look at you with sheepy eyes expecting tips. I avoid valet parking for the same reason. I can fill up my own gas and park my own car, I don't need the service in the first place.
Hey now, without government-subsidized jobs we'd have millions out of work if you take into account not only government agencies but also the US military.
While I think this specific version of government-subsidized jobs (pumping gas) feels forced, I think the government creating jobs is a great thing on the whole. The New Deal was a great example of this, created 20-something million new jobs for a decade or so and pulled us out of the great depression.
Now if we want to talk about truly bad government-subsidized labor it revolves around private companies abusing our welfare systems by paying their workers starvation wages cough Wal-mart cough.
I’d argue that pumping gas overall provides very low value.
Fully automated gas stations has been a thing in my country for thirty years. And they can be up to 20 cents cheaper so it was adopted by consumers very quickly.
This is 110% conjecture on my part, but I always wondered if this law wasn’t originally a covert way to impede travel for certain groups of people by empowering service stations with final say on who was allowed to buy gas https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Racism_in_Oregon
It's fine with me to use my tax dollars to subsidize someone else's income when they have no better alternative. I just wish it wouldn't waste everyone's time while doing so. If you're gonna redistribute wealth at least do it efficiently, lol.
These are the small things that make life better! Wonderful news!
Living in California and driving semi-regularly to Washington I've always had to deal with the Oregon problem of gas stations. I always carry a couple of fuel jugs to fill up so I can avoid Oregon gas stations with their insane service rules. I'm glad that's over, finally.
The only excuse for the law being around so long was that it created jobs. Which was lame reasoning. They intentionally kept the gas tax lower in the state so consumers didn't notice the price difference. So effectively these were government subsidized jobs.
Good riddance. Forcing someone to stand in gas fumes all day was clearly not good for their health. And I always avoided filling up in Oregon because waiting for the "service" could sometimes be longer than the fill-up itself.