Tag Archive for: airplane

Travel Bugs: Everywhere but Planes

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Given the results of this study, where would a person most likely pick up a bug while traveling? Remember, the results of the air and physical locations of the plane that were tested and sent for analysis showed no measurable respiratory viruses of any kind, so the authors speculated about the most likely locations for picking up a virus. They believe you’re more likely to find a bug in transportation to the airport and then to the hotel. Or in the airport at a restaurant or store. In the gate area where people are less confined. In bathrooms where people are more likely to spread the virus to surfaces.

In other words, you can pick up a virus just about everywhere you can imagine but the plane. It’s a good idea to pay the closest attention outside the plane—keep your hand sanitizer handy and wash your hands often—and then don’t worry so much about the inside. Kids are a germ magnet at any time, so be extra vigilant when traveling.

You can also do what I do beginning the day before I leave for a trip: start taking echinacea, garlic, and extra vitamin C to boost your immune system. That’s my way of avoiding respiratory infections or any other form of illness when I travel. After 20 years on the road, it still serves me well. Get the details in the Health Info section of DrChet.com: Immune Boost 1-2-3. In it you’ll learn all about how to tune up your immune system to get ready to meet new germs and viruses, along with the latest info on echinacea, and one more step you can take to get your insides ready to hit the road.

What are you prepared to do today?

Dr. Chet

 

Reference: www.pnas.org/cgi/doi/10.1073/pnas.1711611115

 

The Safest Seat on a Plane

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If you want to boost your odds of remaining healthy after a flight, let’s begin with the location of your seating assignment. Researchers determined that the people in the center of coach had the most contacts with other passengers and flight crew. That makes sense. Everyone with the need is going forward or backward to use the bathrooms. But the contacts increase if the passengers leave their seats. In addition, there’s more contact with the crew in the center of the plane.

As to seat location, the aisle seats get the most contact with crew and passengers, the middle seats a little less. The seat with the least contact with passengers or crew is definitely the window seat; in fact, there are zero contacts about 10% of the time. The crew has the most direct contact with passengers; that’s to be expected as they distribute food and drinks, answer questions, and conduct safety checks.

Here’s the surprise: the results of the air and physical locations that were tested and sent for analysis showed no measurable respiratory viruses of any kind. That seems unusual because eight of the flights were during cold and flu season. But finding no viruses means they found no viruses using standard virus-detection tests. It should be noted they did not test for bacteria that could have been present, just respiratory viruses.

Based on the results, the researchers estimated that the major points of contact would be one meter in front and behind a sick passenger sitting in any row. If you were outside of that zone, you could be reasonably confident you didn’t catch a respiratory infection while on a flight, even if some of the passengers were infected with a respiratory virus. In this day and age, the fear of catching some form of respiratory superbug on a flight is extremely low.

Yet we know travel often results in illness. Where could people pick up a bug? I’ll let you know on Saturday.

What are you prepared to do today?

Dr. Chet

 

Reference: www.pnas.org/cgi/doi/10.1073/pnas.1711611115

Can Airline Travel Make You Sick?

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Have you ever flown for a vacation and found you were beginning to get a cold or other respiratory infection? How about when you fly for business? Just when you want to be at your peak, you’re feeling congested and beginning to cough. You immediately want to blame the flight for making you sick; after all, being in an enclosed area and breathing all that recycled air in a confined space, you obviously picked up a bug from another passenger. Is that a reasonable conclusion?

The risk of respiratory infection is on the minds of those of us who travel for business and pleasure—okay, maybe not the first thing we think about, but it’s on the list. With the possibility of infections being easy to transmit on flights, it’s a global concern as well. The airline manufacturers are concerned because they provide the delivery systems for billions of passengers. It’s also on the minds of researchers who want to know how infections are spread on planes.

Researchers from Emory University, Georgia Institute of Technology, and the Boeing Corporation sought to find out. Using prior research as a guide, they created a methodology of how to assess the course of respiratory infections. This is the kind of study research assistants dream about: they got to take 10 intercontinental flights from Atlanta to several West Coast locations. However, they were not just sitting quietly. They had to track the movement of every passenger and flight crewmember for the entire flight to monitor contacts between passengers and crew. And since they were on Boeing 757s, that’s quite a few passengers. Then they had to sample 22 different surfaces per flight.

I’ll let you know what they found on Thursday.

What are you prepared to do today?

Dr. Chet

 

Reference: www.pnas.org/cgi/doi/10.1073/pnas.1711611115