Not grounded. But training halted. Different meaning. Anyway, it
is just a safety precaution. The leak was just in one cockpit and
very small. It was a small incident. You can breath in the same
substance from combustion exhaust from your cars. Smoking
cigarettes is more dangerous imho.
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No one signs up to become a fighter pilot thinking that the job
will be risk-free, the Lede surmises. You’ll be expected to do
difficult and daring things with a high-performance aircraft
bristling with weapons, and then there’s the whole business of
enemies trying their best to blow you out of the sky should
hostilities break out, the eventuality of which is, after all, why
there are fighter pilots to begin with.
But cancer?
Word this
morning from Israel is that they’ve halted all training
flights by the country’s fleet of F-16I jets
— a variant of the familiar American F-16 built especially for them
by Lockheed Martin — because of a carcinogen in the cockpit.
The offending stuff is formaldehyde,
which is perhaps most familiar as a preservative for biology-class
frog and fetal-pig specimens. Formaldehyde has many industrial
uses, and its fumes are given off by a host of synthetic materials,
including certain plastics, resins and glues; foam insulation is a
frequent culprit. The fumes are also found in combustion exhaust.
In small unventilated spaces like a closed room or a jet cockpit,
the fumes can accumulate to harmful
levels.
The United States Environmental Protection Agency says that
inhaling formaldehyde is associated with an
increased risk of cancer in the linings of your nose,
throat and lungs, among other things (ingesting the stuff isn’t a
great idea either). Put enough formaldehyde in the air around you,
and your eyes probably will start to water and your throat may
burn.
Israel has a lot riding on the F-16I. The initial $2.5 billion
order it placed with Lockheed Martin for at least 50 of the jets in
1999 was the biggest arms order in
the country’s history and drew wide criticism; Israel
has since ordered
more. The first batch delivered in 2004 drew complaints
over radar problems. Even so, the F-16I is the leading weapon of
the Israeli Air Force, and the air force has been the
crucial element in Israel’s military superiority over its neighbors
in war after
war.
The decision to halt training flights — not, notably, to ground
the planes entirely — was prompted by tests that found formaldehyde
in just one of the planes, Haaretz reports. And truth to tell, any
Israeli fighter pilot who smokes
cigarettes may be exposed to a lot more formaldehyde
than by sitting in the cockpit. But the Israeli Defense
Forces took action anyway, no doubt figuring that the
unavoidable risks of Top-Gunnery are
great enough without adding any avoidable ones.
http://thelede.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/03/21/in-israel-a-health-threat-in-a-fighter-jet/index.html?ex=1206763200&en=cfae1b13664a8593&ei=5123&partner=BREITBART
