Airplanes and Aerosolization

Turn OFF the air valve above your seat. This is very important because airplane cabin air is recycled —the same air repeatedly —throughout the entire flight. This means you are vulnerable to inhaling air contaminated with aerosolized pathogenic droplets from other passengers. This aerosolization within a confined space is the result of people’s coughing and sneezing during the flight. 

Turn ON the air valve above your seat. Modern passenger jets do have air filtration systems, some of which are HEPA. If someone in the seat behind you coughs or sounds sick, turn on the air nozzle and point it at your face so the airflow is upstream.

Studies show that some of the most contaminated areas on an airplane are the headrests at the backs of the seats. Touching these headrests causes soft-surface contamination, which occurs when people return to their seats after using the toilet. So even if you wash your hands for 20 seconds with soap, they might still get contaminated with pathogens from touching the headrests as you walk down the plane's aisle.

If people are coughing or sneezing beside, behind, or just in front of you, wear a sanitary mask. You are in a confined space for many hours and will be continually breathing in airborne exhaust fumes from their coughing and sneezing.

Airplane restrooms have the highest number of pathogens of all other public restrooms. Use the airport restroom just before boarding the plane. Limit your intake of soda and other drinks with high-fructose sweeteners to reduce the number of bathroom trips on long flights.

Aerosolization occurs when a physical substance is converted into tiny particles so lightweight that they can float through the air. (38) Exhaling, vomiting, and flushing a toilet can release invisible aerosolized pathogenic droplets into the restroom atmosphere.

The infectious organism trapped within an aerosol droplet is said to be aerosolized. (39)

This aerosol droplet can remain airborne for minutes or up to 2 hours, depending on its size, mass, humidity, and magnetic charge.

The sad reality is that aerosolized droplets, if light enough, can stay airborne for up to two hours. Therefore, public restrooms, elevators, public hallways, stairwells, and corridors need powerful exhaust fans to remove possible contaminated air before we, the public, inhale aerosolized pathogens.

An example of this theory put into practice is the use of negative-pressure rooms in hospitals for very sick people. Air moves from high-pressure to low-pressure areas. Thus, negative pressure is maintained inside the patient’s room by the room’s ventilation system, which can adjust the airflow accordingly by exhausting the patient’s room air to maintain negative pressure.

Negative airflow prevents infectious aerosolized droplets exhaled by the patient during coughing or sneezing from escaping into the hospital’s public corridor, hospital ward, or central ventilation system.

What most people are not aware of is that these confined spaces, like elevators, do not have exhaust ventilation fans designed to expel the air rapidly and instead have an incoming, Hepa-filtered air supply. In other words, when a sick person enters a public elevator (e.g., office building, hospital, university, international airport) and coughs and sneezes, airborne bacteria/viruses trapped in a minuscule droplet could remain airborne for hours, at least until someone steps into this contaminated and confined space.

Elevator survival tricks for when you’re trapped in an elevator with a coughing person who looks sick.

AIRPLANES AND AEROSOLIZATION                                                                                         91

• Turn your back to the person coughing/ sneezing.
• Breathe through your nose slowly.
• Close your mouth.
• Squint your eyes so you can barely see through your lashes.
• Get off at the first stop available.
• Use tissues and blow your nose several times.
• Wash your face.
• If you have long hair, shake it out, shake it off.

Have you ever noticed that doctors, nurses, and medical staff use the hospital stairs and not the elevators?

I like to use a tissue to blow my nose after leaving an elevator. The nose hairs are now cleaner and better able to defend my breathing passage against the next confined space with invisible aerosolized microbial life forms floating in the stagnant air. I believe, without any evidence to support the idea, that the longer you do not clean your nose, the more dust, bacteria, and crud accumulate, which minimizes the ability of nose hairs to clean the air coming into the lungs.