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A study reported in the European Heart Journal, documents the risk of increase blood pressure from the night-time noise of aircraft or traffic. The study was conducted on 140 sleeping volunteers in homes around four large European airports.

When the sleepers were exposed to a noise above 35 dB, there was a significant increase in blood pressure. (Average noise levels: urban night-time = 40 dB, average aircraft on takeoff >= 75 dB, average aircraft on landing >= 65 dB). High blood pressure leads to increase risk of hypertension, hypertension = death? Many pilots can attest to the potential for hearing loss as well, so don’t forget your headset or earplugs to avoid death.

More work may have to be done to confirm a definite correlation. Any volunteers?

Sikorsky’s Polish manufacturing affiliate, PZL Mielec, has been busy implementing sustainable initiatives at it’s facility since March of 2007. They are reporting

reduced air emissions by 15 percent, removed more than 20 underground storage tanks to reduce the potential contamination of the company’s water resource and improved energy efficiency with new lighting windows and insulation to bring the facility up to higher ecological standards.

and are the first in Europe to use zero and low-VOC paint on their aircraft. A little known fact to all of us here at Speel, “Sikorsky has used zero- Volatile Organic Compound (VOC) and low-VOC material in the United States since 2000.”

In partnership with Virgin Atlantic, Air New Zealand, GE and Rolls Royce, Boeing will begin testing biofuels on short range 747 flights. The Virgin 747 will test the GE made engines and the Air New Zealand will test the Rolls Royce engines.

Boeing’s tests showed that a variety of feedstocks, such as algae, can produce biofuels with kerosene-like freezing characteristics.

Overcoming the higher freezing temperatures plaguing most biofuels is one of the greatest hurdles in large scale adoption. Expensive and unreasonable retrofits to keep some biofuels above freezing temperatures would be required to use biodiesels as demonstrated by BioJet.

Using 100% biofuel, Carol Sugars and Doug Rodante flew into our favorite piece of news so far in 2007, completing their successful flight in an Aero L-29 Delfín. The jet is rated to fly on various fuel types and has a fuel heating system to combat the higher freezing temperatures associated with many non-kerosene based fuels.

Flying up to 17,000′ MSL, the team reported engine performance equal to conventional Jet A fuel. The flight was conducted out of Reno-Stead Airport, near the home base of Biodiesel Solutions, Inc. which provided the fuel for the flight and has been working in conjunction with the Green Flight International team.
Keep in touch for news on their planned around the world flight.

Let’s do the math really quickly:

660,649,759
(individual passengers on US domestic flights in 2006*)
x
25%

(an ultra conservative guess at the number of cans used on an average flight. 50% of the people ordering a tasty beverage contained in an aluminum can divided in half for the airlines squeezing two drinks out of each can)

=
165,162,440
(aluminum cans consumed)
x
0.03133 pounds
(weight of aluminum can*)
=
5,174,262 pounds of aluminum to potentially be recycled
(in the US alone)

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