An MD80 passenger reported becoming ill following an MD80 flight which had a preflight lavatory serv...

Narrative:

I was a passenger. I was seated in the rear of the aircraft. The flight was late in arriving and the crew did their best to turn the aircraft around to return to the next destination. After all the passengers were loaded; the ground crew performed maintenance on the toilet system of the plane. As they pumped the holding tank; an acrid smell came through the passenger air vents above the seats. It smelled like holding tank effluent as it had the perfume smell that is used in the 'blue' water. It was so bad that I turned off my air vent. That night after I got home; I experienced severe nausea and made several trips to the bathroom. As of this moment I am still experiencing bouts of dysentery. I believe that some of the holding tank effluent sprayed on the aircraft near the intake for the passenger air and spread some sort of contagion like norwalk virus throughout the cabin air. There have been reports of flu or tb being spread through aircraft on the ground when cabin air is recirculated. At best such a procedure should not be done while the aircraft is loaded with passengers or greater precaution taken to insure that holding tank effluent is not allowed to escape while performing the procedure.

Original NASA ASRS Text

Title: An MD80 passenger reported becoming ill following an MD80 flight which had a preflight lavatory service with passengers on board and 'Blue' water somehow got into the airconditioning system.

Narrative: I was a passenger. I was seated in the rear of the aircraft. The flight was late in arriving and the crew did their best to turn the aircraft around to return to the next destination. After all the passengers were loaded; the ground crew performed maintenance on the toilet system of the plane. As they pumped the holding tank; an acrid smell came through the passenger air vents above the seats. It smelled like holding tank effluent as it had the perfume smell that is used in the 'blue' water. It was so bad that I turned off my air vent. That night after I got home; I experienced severe nausea and made several trips to the bathroom. As of this moment I am still experiencing bouts of dysentery. I believe that some of the holding tank effluent sprayed on the aircraft near the intake for the passenger air and spread some sort of contagion like Norwalk virus throughout the cabin air. There have been reports of flu or TB being spread through aircraft on the ground when cabin air is recirculated. At best such a procedure should not be done while the aircraft is loaded with passengers or greater precaution taken to insure that holding tank effluent is not allowed to escape while performing the procedure.

Data retrieved from NASA's ASRS site as of April 2012 and automatically converted to unabbreviated mixed upper/lowercase text. This report is for informational purposes with no guarantee of accuracy. See NASA's ASRS site for official report.

Attributes
ACN	974112
Time
Date	201110
Local Time Of Day	1201-1800
Place
Locale Reference	ZZZ.Airport
State Reference	US
Environment
Light	Daylight
Aircraft 1
Make Model Name	MD-80 Series (DC-9-80) Undifferentiated or Other Model
Operating Under FAR Part	Part 121
Flight Phase	Parked
Flight Plan	IFR
Component
Aircraft Component	Waste Water Disposal System
Person 1
Function	Passenger
Events
Anomaly	Aircraft Equipment Problem Less Severe Flight Deck / Cabin / Aircraft Event Smoke / Fire / Fumes / Odor Ground Event / Encounter Other / Unknown

An MD80 passenger reported becoming ill following an MD80 flight which had a preflight lavatory service with passengers on board and 'blue' water somehow got into the airconditioning system.