(WSJ) – Gregory O’Shanick, a specialist in brain-injury medicine from Richmond, Va., has treated flight crew for serious injuries that he says were caused by toxic exposure on commercial aircraft. 

He has also identified what he said are clear parallels between crews’ symptoms and those he’s found in soldiers with concussive traumas caused by chemical exposures and explosive blasts on battlefields.

In both groups, the links between severe head injury and life-threatening brain diseases including ALS, dementia, brain tumors, and acute depression are “extremely well-connected and well-associated,” said O’Shanick, who served for 14 years as the medical director for the Brain Injury Association of America.

O’Shanick, Van de Goot and other medical professionals, including Michael Freeman, a professor of forensic epidemiology at Maastricht University, agreed with the industry position that direct causation hasn’t been proven, in part because companies have objected to placing air quality monitors on aircraft. But they also stressed an urgency for that work to be done. (Read More)