How do atmospheric ultrafine particles penetrate into the cabin of a waiting commercial airliner and affect passengers' health? A case study at Tianjin Airport, China

Passengers and crew on board of commercial airliners often spend extra time in the cabin waiting for departure due to flight delays. During the waiting period, a large amount of ambient ultrafine particles (UFPs) may penetrate into the aircraft cabin through the environmental control system (ECS) and ground air conditioning cart (GAC). However, limited data is available for human exposure, in waiting commercial airliners, to freshly emitted UFPs from the exhaust of ground vehicles and airliners. We measured the ambient and in-cabin particle number concentrations and particle size distributions (PSD) simultaneously in an MD-82 airliner parked at Tianjin Airport. The in-cabin and ambient PSDs ranged from 15 to 600 nm were bimodal, with peaks at 30-40 nm and 70-90 nm. The GAC and ECS removed 1% to 73% particles in the size range of 15 to 100 nm, and 30% to 47% in the size range of 100 to 600 nm.