Ultrafine particles in the cabin of a waiting commercial airliner at Tianjin International 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 are available for human exposure, in waiting commercial airliners, to freshly emitted UFPs from the exhaust of ground vehicles and airliners. To address this issue, we measured the ambient and in-cabin particle number concentrations and particle size distributions (PSDs) simultaneously in an MD-82 airliner parked at Tianjin International Airport, China. When air was supplied to the cabin by GAC, particle counts variation outdoors caused in-cabin variation with a 1–2 min delay. The in-cabin and ambient PSDs ranged from 15 to 600 nm were bimodal, with peaks at 30–40 and 70–90 nm. The GAC and ECS removed 1–73% particles in the size range of 15–100 nm and 30–47% in the size range of 100–600 nm. The relationship between the penetration factor and particle size was an inverted U-curve. An improved particle dynamic model from this study was used to calculate the time-dependent in-cabin UFPs concentrations with dramatic changes in outdoor concentration.