Air passengers often complain about aircraft ventilation. A normal airplane cabin changes its air 15 to 20 times an hour. A typical office building changes its air 12 times an hour.

15% of U.S. commercial airliners carrying more than 100 passengers lack HEPA filters.

Federal regulatory agencies have no requirements for how much ventilation an aircraft should have. They don’t specify what kind of HEPA filters to use or even require them.

The risk of catching something from another infected passenger is about 1 in 1,000 — about the same as an office building.

Planes normally set cabin pressure to what you’d experience at the top of an 8,000-foot mountain. Since cruising altitudes are higher than this, planes cycle air through their engines to pressurize it. That heats the air, which is then cooled. This way there’s hardly a drop of moisture.

You end up with low-humidity, desert-like air and the longer you fly, the drier your mucous membranes get. The dryer they get, the more susceptible they are to infection.

The risk is higher than your typical office environment, because of the much higher concentration of people for the air that you have.

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There’s a new product out that lets you draw power for any USB-chargeable device from the headphone jack on your armrest while in an airplane. Sounds pretty cool huh? It’s called Inflight Power and the adapter for the headphone jack.
You plug the cord into your seat’s audio jack, turn the dial to a channel with consistently loud music such as rock music, put the volume all the way up and plug in your device. It doesn’t look like they will work for laptops unfortunately.

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Air passengers often complain about aircraft ventilation. A normal airplane cabin changes its air 15 to 20 times an hour. A typical office building changes its air 12 times an hour.

15% of U.S. commercial airliners carrying more than 100 passengers lack HEPA filters. Federal regulatory agencies have no requirements for how much ventilation an aircraft should have. They don’t specify what kind of HEPA filters to use or even require them.

The risk of catching something from another infected passenger is about 1 in 1,000 — about the same as an office building.

Planes normally set cabin pressure to what you’d experience at the top of an 8,000-foot mountain. Since cruising altitudes are higher than this, planes cycle air through their engines to pressurize it. That heats the air, which is then cooled. This way there’s hardly a drop of moisture.

You end up with low-humidity, desert-like air and the longer you fly, the drier your mucous membranes get. The dryer they get, the more susceptible they are to infection.

The risk is higher than your typical office environment, because of the much higher concentration of people for the air that you have.

Comments(0)