Avoid germs while traveling with these five simple tips

November 23, 2016

As the holiday season approaches and people are getting ready to travel to tourist spots or go back to their hometowns for their vacations, the risk of carrying and spreading disease also increases. According to studies, germs can travel easily on an airplane, where people are packed together like sardines.

For example, a woman on a 1994 flight from Chicago to Honolulu transmitted drug-resistant tuberculosis to at least six of her fellow passengers, according to a New England Journal of Medicine study.

In 2003, 22 people came down with severe acute respiratory syndrome from a single fellow passenger who had SARS but didn’t have any symptoms, according to another New England journal study.

Dr. Mark Gendreau, a senior staff physician at the Lahey Clinic in Burlington, Massachusetts in the US, studies germiness and he knows just how infectious travel can be.

“The risk of contracting a contagious illness is heightened when we travel within any enclosed space, especially during the winter months, when most of the respiratory viruses thrive,” Gendreau said.
But the airplane isn’t the only place along your travel route where germs thrive. Here are five ways to avoid germs while traveling.

1. Sit toward the front of the airplane.

Gendreau advises travelers to pick a seat near the front of the plane as ventilation systems on most commercial aircrafts provide better airflow in the front. If you can afford it, sit in first class, where people aren’t so squished together.

2. Avoid drinking coffee or tea on an airplane.

Monitoring by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) shows that water in airplanes’ water tanks isn’t always clean – and coffee and tea are usually made from that water, not from bottled water, according to Victoria Day, a spokeswoman for the Air Transport Association.

Passengers with suppressed immune systems or anyone who’s “concerned” about bacteria is advised by the EPA to refrain from drinking coffee or tea on an airplane.

According to the EPA website, boiling water for a minute will remove pathogens from drinking water. However, the water used to prepare coffee and tea aboard a plane is not generally brought to a sufficiently high temperature to guarantee that pathogens are killed.

According to a previous EPA study, out of 7,812 water samples taken from 2,316 aircraft, 2.8% were positive for coliform bacteria. Although that sounds like a small number, this means 222 samples contained coliform bacteria.

3. Sanitize your hands after leaving an airplane bathroom.

A toilet on an airplane “is among the germiest that you will encounter almost anywhere,” said Charles Gerba, an environmental microbiologist at the University of Arizona who’s also known as “Dr. Germ.”

“You have 50 people per toilet, unless you are flying a discount airline; then it is 75,” Gerba said. “We always find E. coli on surfaces in airplane restrooms.”

You should wash your hands after using the restroom, but because the water itself might have harmful bacteria and because the door handle on your way out has been touched by all those who went before you, Gendreau also advises sanitizing your hands when you return to your seat.

4. Wash or sanitize your hands after getting off an escalator.

Escalators have even more people using it on a daily basis compared to aircraft toilets so you can be sure that these will be full of germs as well.

You can do a fun activity while waiting for your flight to confirm this. Look at your watch, and count how many people get an escalator in a five-minute time period. Multiply that by 12, and you have how many people are on that escalator every hour.
High-volume handrails are why Gendreau sanitizes his hands as soon as he can after he exits an escalator.

5. Wash or sanitize your hands after using an ATM.

According to Gendreau, ATMs, especially in busy places like airports, are full of germs. As with escalators, he sanitizes as soon as possible after using one.

Gendreau says that keeping healthy while traveling can be summed up in six words: “hand hygiene, hand hygiene, hand hygiene.”

Keeping your hands clean is crucial, he says, when you’re spending the day touching surfaces that have been touched by hundreds or thousands of people before you.

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