Nothing strikes fear into the heart of a traveller like a seat companion with a cold. Photo: Getty Images
There’s nothing more discomforting than sitting alongside a sneezing, wheezing traveller in cramped quarters for hours on end – particular if, like I, you grew up in a germaphobic household. But going by the results of a recent study, released last month, those fears appear to be well founded.
The findings of Auburn University in Alabama, which were presented at the annual conference of the American Society for Microbiology, revealed that disease-causing bacteria can survive for up to a week inside plane cabins, on surfaces such as seat pockets, tray tables, window shades and armrests. Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA), a bacteria that could cause infections, skin disease, pneumonia and sepsis, lived the longest (168 hours); Escherichia coli (E. coli), which can cause urinary tract infection, respiratory illness and diarrhoea, was found to survive for 96 hours.
The web is awash with equally worrying studies, which would suggest that every square inch of a plane is a potential habitat for germs.
CNN, back in 2010, highlighted six key “germ zones”, perhaps the most surprising of which was the on-board water. It cites a 2004 study that saw water samples taken on board 327 different domestic and international aircraft. Some were found to have contained E. coli. Coffee and tea are brewed using this water, it said, but don’t typically reach hot enough temperatures to kill E. coli. More worrying still, it claimed that when bottled water runs out, some crew members have been known to fill passengers’ glasses from the tank. One British Airways crew member was said to have told The Times that the crew wait for any cloudy “floating stuff” in the tank water to settle before serving it to passengers. It was added that planes sometimes refill their water tanks at foreign airports, where the water quality may not be so reliable.