"Do not drink coffee or tea onboard." - Why not? Most common pathogens are killed by 140F water, and tea and coffee extracts disrupt some pathogens. As long as the water has been kept hot for a while, or approaches boiling temp, you're good
Even killing all pathogens does not reduce all toxins already present in contaminated liquids. If you or others you know ever had (air) “traveller diarrhea”, you can try avoiding liquids in planes and see how it goes. The n95 masking and avoidance of drinks and food during flights opened the eyes of a lot of friends to this change. None of these pathogens in water are very serious strains to the body, whereas covid or flu are, so not as big a deal as avoiding yet another nasty airborne disease, but it all helps in small ways.
> Even killing all pathogens does not reduce all toxins already present in contaminated liquids.
There are two things to be mindful of: Food Poisoning and Food Intoxication.
Poisoning occurs from microbes (e.g. salmonella). Most are killed instantly at ~165F/74F, or at lower temperatures if those temperatures are kept for some period of time (140F/60C@12min; 150F/65C@72sec):
However, microbes are living things, and when they metabolize food they create waste. That waste can also be harmful to humans as well, but the waste is not dealt with high temperatures. So even if you kill the microbes at high temperatures to prevent poisoning, if there's enough waste around and you ingest it you may get food intoxication.
Apparently foodbourne intoxication is a food thing, not a water [tank] thing [1]. It seems heat-stable toxins are very rare in drinking water, as it isn't nutrient-rich enough to create enough toxins to affect you. Even biofilms don't really generate much toxins, they just leech off the microbes which cause issues.
Another example of this would be old rooftop water tanks in places like NYC. It's a giant tank which never gets cleaned, and often has all kinds of gross things in it, but (usually) no food for germs to munch on.
Ever since COVID, I've been hyper aware of anywhere I'm being confined with people, breathing their air, touching things they were touching, sitting where they were and so on. I feel like I'm hallucinating and can visualize the human germs and filth in the liquids, in the air, everywhere. Airlines are of course the worst, but I'll still bring a mask to any indoor space like a small bar or restaurant, avoid touching anything, avoid touching my own face/eyes. Super attuned to hygiene. Every enclosed space outside of my own home/car feels disgusting and urgent to avoid.
IANAD, but that sounds like clinical mysophobia (germaphobia).
No judgement — I’m sure COVID has done this to many people. But if it’s causing you anxiety or other stress, it may be worth considering talking to someone.
I think, generally, the real risks are overblown. E.g. many people can be anxious about the bacteria on our phones. And they do contain a lot, but most of them are harmless.
As long as you wash your hands when you get home from being in public, and don’t touch your face while in public, and clean your phone if you’ve been in a high risk public area, you’re likely knocking out most real risks.
Again, I’m not an expert. But I’ve done some digging on it, and this is my take, FWIW.
I don’t think approaching boiling temps is quite enough unless it’s kept there for a long time (see pasteurisation times at various temps). I would agree with the author that if the contamination levels are high I wouldn’t risk it.
boiling is more than enough to kill bacteria in general (Ex: if one had the ability to bring chicken instantly up to a temperature of 160F or so, it be considered perfectly safe. In the sous vide world one might only want to bring it up to 140-150F to not overcook it, and therefore would hold it at that lower temperature for some longer time).
With that said, this is only for bacteria. Bacteria also can produce spores (Ex: the botulism toxin produced by a bacteria, which is produced in an anaerobic environment, and exactly why sous vide cooking at low temperatures can be dangerous, as the anaerobic environment that it can thrive in and if kept at temperaturese in the danger zone where it can thrive can result in the production of botulism that won't be later killed/destroyed by higher temps that kill its producing bacteria)
It's a mere anecdote and YMMV but I've had the onboard coffee and tea with a variety of airlines many times over the years and to memory it's never given me trouble.
This varies significantly from person to person, yeah.
I was fine for years until I wasn’t - now I basically restrict myself bottled water and wine, which come from outside the plane. Many airlines flown in the past year around the world too.
Another problem with that is we don't know what made us sick. And if we think airplane coffee is fine but didn't like lunch at the diner, we tend to assume it's the latter.
If the airline really doesn't care about the quality of water, then there might be other things in the water beside bacteria. Boiling will not remove chemical contaminants.
How are these scores so vastly different between airlines?
I understand the water sources may vary (by airport? not sure?), but if the planes are largely manufactured by Boeing and Airbus, how are the onboard water sources / distribution systems getting contaminated?
Delta being a 5.00 means they're doing something different, but what is it & what control do they have over the plumbing, water systems, etc.?
If you have a holding tank of water like in an airplane, and you never clean it, you’re going to have pathogens build up. Just adding in new fresh water isn’t enough.
What water are they testing? The drinking water on Alaska, for example, is Boxed Water. I'm not sure if that's what they use for coffee and tea, but they didn't actually mention testing the coffee or tea (that I could find).
They do not used bottled (or boxed) water for coffee.
That comes from the coffee machine built into the galley, which uses the aircraft’s onboard potable water tanks.
Those tanks are filled from a hose by the ground crew during refueling.
(At least for major US airlines. I understand some other carriers serve instant coffee packets. Even then, the hot water still comes from the aircraft tanks.)
I wonder how air Canada reconciles this. There was a popular globe and mail article a while ago that gave awful rankings to air Canada's water tanks -- so the company put up signs in the bathroom saying the water is non-potable and called it a day.
Not super comforting if they're then using the same 'non-potable' water to make coffee...
Is there any reason to expect there would be "toxins", given that it's just water? I can imagine how there might be accumulated toxins it's a pack of chicken breasts left in a hot car for 8 hours, but if it's water it should be fine? After all, boiling water is a tried and true way of making water safe to drink.
Yes, there are substances that slip through, but it works well enough for most cases that it's probably fine. Otherwise you get into weird edge cases like "what if there are prions in the water?!?" or whatever.
Completely orthagonal -- I absolutely can't stand the taste of the "Boxed Water" Alaska uses. I swear I can taste the cardboard or whatever they use to package it. I always bring my own water instead.
WTF is with these AI slop header images... does the author actually think an image of a woman crumpling a cup into her face against a backdrop of airplane parts is not going to distract from the post?
> person drinking airline coffee unsure what is in it / Midjourney
I’d rather PJ focus on his podcast rather than making visual art. Akin to using a stock image instead of going out taking a picture instead to save time.
I'm sure they're correct about a lot of airline water being nasty - no argument there, but the organization/website sounds like it has a mission that is probably at least partly pseudoscience adjacent:
"Mission
Center For Food As Medicine & Longevity is a nonprofit organization working to bridge the gap between traditional medicine and the use of food as medicine in the prevention, treatment, and management of disease while also increasing access to these treatments, thereby creating a more equitable food system that will improve health outcomes."
It might not be, but I'm skeptical of most articles coming from organizations sounding like that. Eating healthy and nutritious food is incredibly important and a good diet can prevent certain diseases. Maybe that is all they're trying to say. However, I come across a lot of people who just think you can avoid medicine all together and just eat certain foods and herbs.
Afaik "eating healthy" research is almost always observational. And hard to untangle it from socioeconomical status.
In the last years there is some doubt among researchers that "eating healthy" is the magic cure all. It plays some role, but it may be overblown in the public view.
Before reading TFA, I'd like to bet $50 that if the article includes the rankings, Delta will be at the very top and American Airlines will be at the very bottom
Yes, it's night and day. From purchase to lounge to flight and even airport terminal, it's a completely different experience. American Airlines is not only bad overall but it's so f dirty everywhere.
And also every time there's a report, they rank this way
I always take my suitcase and my backpack to the airplane and then I check my suitcase at the gate. Three reasons. First, there are no baggage fees at the gate. Second, I can roll backpack on my suitcase. Third, I get to board early for "helping out". Why wouldn't you do this?
I do only check it if someone else in my party is already checking bags but that turns out to be most of the time for me.
Note: I'm actually replying to a reply that's too deep.
Normally gate checking is the better option, but you can't do it when flying with stuff that can't go into a carryon: bottles of wine, firearms, and so on.
The advantage of American, anecdotally, is most of their planes in the routes I've been flying have the sideway bag bins that don't fill up, so I don't have to play the standing-in-line and boarding group game.
Gotcha, good to keep in mind. I can't /stand/ dirty fart tubes (though, recently I used Delta and it was fine), but otherwise haven't flown much in the past 5 years.
If you want to go the extra mile (no pun intended), when flying out of an airport that is a major airline hub, avoid that airline at all costs i.e. don't fly United out of EWR, American out of MIA, etc. They tend to be ridiculously busy and crowded.
I'm a little surprised United is so bad in this. IME I've only seen fresh, sealed water bottles, so it must be the environment? But I can't think of a single actual factor that seemed different on United vs. Delta
« Do not wash your hands in the bathroom; use alcohol-based hand sanitizer containing at least 60% alcohol instead. »
Alcohol only kills some pathogens. Notably, it does not kill norovirus. If the water has coliform bacteria, you should wash your hands with soap and water and then use the alcohol hand sanitizer
That people like the author of the article proudly don't wash their hands after being in a bathroom is a huge argument for washing your hands whenever you've been in public and trying to avoid touching your face if you haven't washed your hands.
I don't think this has anything to do with being "proud" when it's part of a study summary that said the water you'd wash with commonly contains e.coli and advises a different cleaning method instead -- misguided as that conclusion may be when considering other types of viruses (I'm not an expert and cannot judge either argument's merit). Seems strange/unfair to lump them in with people that "proudly" (do you know anyone like that??) don't clean their hands
To quote George Carlin (careful, swearwords ahead):
When I was a little boy in New York City in the 1940s, we swam in the Hudson River and it was filled with raw sewage okay? We swam in raw sewage! You know... to cool off! And at that time, the big fear was polio; thousands of kids died from polio every year but you know something? In my neighbourhood, no one ever got polio! No one! Ever! You know why? Cause we swam in raw sewage! It strengthened our immune systems! The polio never had a prayer; we were tempered in raw shit! So personally, I never take any special precautions against germs. I don't shy away from people that sneeze and cough, I don't wipe off the telephone, I don't cover the toilet seat, and if I drop food on the floor, I pick it up and eat it! Yes I do. Even if I'm at a sidewalk café! In Calcutta! The poor section! On New Year's morning during a soccer riot! And you know something? In spite of all that so-called risky behaviour, I never get infections, I don't get them, I don't get colds, I don't get flu, I don't get headaches, I don't get upset stomach, you know why? Cause I got a good strong immune system and it gets a lot of practice.
Carlin had a history of heart problems,[82][83] including heart attacks in 1978, 1982, and 1991.[52] He also had an arrhythmia requiring an ablation procedure in 2003, a significant episode of heart failure in 2005, and two angioplasties on undisclosed dates.[84] In the 2022 documentary George Carlin's American Dream, Jerry Hamza—Carlin's manager from 1980 until his death—said Carlin underwent many heart surgeries in a short period toward the end of his life. Carlin's publicist Jeff Abraham said that he once lifted his shirt after coming to a gig from the hospital to show Abraham his torso, whereupon Abraham said it looked like a science project.
Dude had his first heart attack at the age of 41, and lived four years less than today's median life expectancy in the United States.
Unfortunately there are people out there (a non-trivial number) who actually believe that kind of macho BS. Knowing that, Carlin's jokes don't hit the same.
I don't think that's a good argument. If I went this route, I would have to forgo Monty Python, Key & Peele, Mitchell and Webb, and god knows who else. There are always people believing this hyperbole, that's why it's funny in the first place.
But the good jokes either go extremely over the top, or actually have a joke part. The quoted one just repeats a thing that people believe. Reading it, I can't tell if it's supposed to be mocking the position, or is he a genuine grumpy guy complaining about kids these days and their cleaning.
I'm sure you can find the whole sketch on Youtube. I can only recommend watching it, unless you are allergic to swearwords - there are lots of those. Look for [George Carlin Germs]. But I guess the audience on HN generally knows how to figure it out by themselves.
Unfortunately the reason you need mechanical cleaning is that dirt and grime prevent disinfectants from reaching pathogens or being effective once they do reach them.
Related rant: The widespread stupidity around bathroom doors calls the intelligence of humans into (even more) question.
Airplane-bathroom doors open out because they must. But the number of public-bathroom doors that inexplicably open INWARD is mind-boggling. Instead of simply having doors open outward, millions of bathrooms create mountains of paper waste by having them open inward and encouraging users to waste a paper towel to grab its handle.
The reason that interior doors in general open inwards is fire safety. Doors that only open outwards can be obstructed from the outside, preventing evacuation.
Or, rather than trying to keep your hands sterile which is a futile exercise, doing what the military teaches - keep your hands away from your face (eyes, nose, mouth) and don't scratch your skin.
The reason you care about germs on your hands is because they make you sick when you stick them in your body orifaces. Otherwise, those germs don't matter.
This is a pretty dumb report overall. What do I do if I'm on a plane with a 3.85 rating, or a "B"? How are these measures supposed to influence my decision making? I'll just follow the spirit of the ridiculous recommendations:
NEVER drink any water onboard; only drink alcohol-based hand sanitizer containing at least 60% alcohol instead
Not everyone is the same. My teeth and gums are not that good and I definitely feel much better brushing them after every meal (though I'm aware I should wait after acidic food).
(time-wise, I started increasing brushing after the situation got worse. The root cause for the worsening was not seeing a dentist for two years. Don't do that, definitely see a dentist periodically. And the dentist seems happy with my brushing decision, need to do as much as I can to prevent plaque formation)
For airplanes, I buy three small bottles of water before flight (15hr flight). And I use that for drinking, rinsing and washing my toothbrush. While we cannot bring bottled water from outside the airport to the embarking area, there are usually shops in that area that sell small bottles.
If I'm taking an 8 hour flight after hours at the airport, transit, etc. and am already using the plane bathroom for physiological reasons, I don't mind a quick brush with bottled water...
I think that's a bit of a harsh take. People will use what they can get, and they may be assuming the signage was placed there for compliance/legal box-ticking reasons rather than because it will actually make them sick.
If you fail to heed a warning, though, the law provides that you assume the risk of injury that could result and contributed to your own injury. Without assumption of risk, anyone who provides any services would be strictly liable for any injury, even for those that don’t result from inherently dangerous activities. That would mark a significant change in the law and would suddenly make a lot of activities and services infeasible to provide.
isnt most of the advantage of soap is that it gets the germs off your skin and washes them down the drain. the soap does not have to kill them to work.
I thought that soap did something more than just wash the nasties off - something about it interfering with cell walls of viruses/bacteria and therefore killing them
Handwashing is thought to be effective for the prevention of transmission of diarrhoea pathogens. However it is not conclusive that handwashing with soap is more effective at reducing contamination with bacteria associated with diarrhoea than using water only. In this study 20 volunteers contaminated their hands deliberately by touching door handles and railings in public spaces. They were then allocated at random to (1) handwashing with water, (2) handwashing with non-antibacterial soap and (3) no handwashing. Each volunteer underwent this procedure 24 times, yielding 480 samples overall. Bacteria of potential faecal origin (mostly Enterococcus and Enterobacter spp.) were found after no handwashing in 44% of samples. Handwashing with water alone reduced the presence of bacteria to 23% (p < 0.001). Handwashing with plain soap and water reduced the presence of bacteria to 8% (comparison of both handwashing arms: p < 0.001). The effect did not appear to depend on the bacteria species. Handwashing with non-antibacterial soap and water is more effective for the removal of bacteria of potential faecal origin from hands than handwashing with water alone and should therefore be more useful for the prevention of transmission of diarrhoeal diseases.
The implication of antibacterial soap is that it contains antibiotics, which leads to resistance in bacterial populations. Non-antibacterial soap is a misnomer, it is plenty effective against bacteria, but kills the bacteria mechanically.
> The “Shame on You” Award goes to the EPA for weak enforcement.
I had a laugh at this. Honestly, I'd love a world that the right wing is seeking with low regulation. The only problem is that these companies won't behave without regulatory bodies. So yeah, in a sense I agree with them that they are a waste of tax payer money. But the waste is from private industry. They're so unreliable we need a third party constantly checking them. The inefficiency of this third party is definitely an issue but the whole reason for their existence is that they willingly misbehave.
It makes me wonder, how much money is actually wasted by this? It also feels like violations should be the primary funding for these agencies. (Probably creates perverse incentives though)
Your second sentence is so incongruent with the rest of your post. Low regulation always, always, always leads to abuse and whatever-I-can-get-away-with behavior. Why would you love that world?
If the EPA had 100X its current staff, 100X its funding, 100X the teeth, 100X the enforcement, and 100X the fines collected, we would probably live in a paradise.
Because you missed the premise. The premise of "what if we lived in a world where that abuse didn't exist?" Where it naturally follows "how much would be saved if that abuse didn't exist?"
I'd like to see a similar test for airports. I always fill up my water bottle in the airport (at one of the water fountains for filling bottles) before boarding.
Don't airlines serve bottled water? Alaska has Boxed Water (same as bottled water).
I also started doing this since it seems to be a nobrainer to bring some empty water container rather than paying outrageous prices on bottled water... But a couple days ago I flew to the US through Heathrow and saw some guy drinking with his mouth from one of those refill stations, and now I'm not sure anymore because I feel like one in n people will touch/contaminate it.
Similarly when I use a public restroom it is shocking to me how many people don't even follow the most basic personal hygiene.
I find it absolutely puzzling that people refill their bottles in those public fountains.
Last time I was in SFO I saw dozens of people doing that in the time it took from deplaning till boarding an Uber and all I could do was scratch my head
My understanding is the water tested in this study is the water in the lavatory faucet and what they use to make hot beverages onboard. If you ask a flight attendant for water you would always get water from a can/bottle/box depending on airline, at least based on my limited experience.
tl;dr some airlines have poo in their water. Best advice is to treat any water not coming out of a bottle on an airplane as non potable. Wash your hands with it and that’s about it and even then a good hand sanitizer afterwards is a good idea.
During boarding/unboarding, sure, but during the actual flight when the aircrafts intake/recirculation system is running you're getting much better air quality than basically any building you'd be in. “Tiny steel tube with hundreds of others” is a _very_ misleading statement.
In-flight is quite risky: long-haul flights have much more covid transmission than short flights, which should not happen if transmission only occurred during takeoff and landing.
Interesting, although it's worth noting that the study specifically calls out that “Third, we cannot exclude other risks in air travel beyond in-flight risks, e.g., queuing for security or customs or boarding the plane, as well as the waiting time on the runway or transfers to terminals in public buses”.
(To the people who downvoted that comment: shame on you)
The advance air circulation system doesn't help that much with the lady coughing and blowing her nose right next to me and the filthy child touching every seat armrest as he walks down the aisle.
If the comment said that, I wouldn't have said anything, but it repeated nonsense about the density of people sealed in a metal tube, which is more or less nonsense.
I guess people really don't like putting something on their face. Nobody advices only washing hands and being generally healthy against getting STIs; the advice is blocking the pathogens in the first place, I'm not sure why our lungs don't deserve as much protection.
(plus masking makes the air more humid which helps with the dry air I feel)
"Do not drink coffee or tea onboard." - Why not? Most common pathogens are killed by 140F water, and tea and coffee extracts disrupt some pathogens. As long as the water has been kept hot for a while, or approaches boiling temp, you're good
Even killing all pathogens does not reduce all toxins already present in contaminated liquids. If you or others you know ever had (air) “traveller diarrhea”, you can try avoiding liquids in planes and see how it goes. The n95 masking and avoidance of drinks and food during flights opened the eyes of a lot of friends to this change. None of these pathogens in water are very serious strains to the body, whereas covid or flu are, so not as big a deal as avoiding yet another nasty airborne disease, but it all helps in small ways.
> Even killing all pathogens does not reduce all toxins already present in contaminated liquids.
There are two things to be mindful of: Food Poisoning and Food Intoxication.
Poisoning occurs from microbes (e.g. salmonella). Most are killed instantly at ~165F/74F, or at lower temperatures if those temperatures are kept for some period of time (140F/60C@12min; 150F/65C@72sec):
* https://www.michiganfoodsafety.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/0...
* Tables 2 to 4: https://www.fsis.usda.gov/sites/default/files/media_file/202...
However, microbes are living things, and when they metabolize food they create waste. That waste can also be harmful to humans as well, but the waste is not dealt with high temperatures. So even if you kill the microbes at high temperatures to prevent poisoning, if there's enough waste around and you ingest it you may get food intoxication.
Apparently foodbourne intoxication is a food thing, not a water [tank] thing [1]. It seems heat-stable toxins are very rare in drinking water, as it isn't nutrient-rich enough to create enough toxins to affect you. Even biofilms don't really generate much toxins, they just leech off the microbes which cause issues.
Another example of this would be old rooftop water tanks in places like NYC. It's a giant tank which never gets cleaned, and often has all kinds of gross things in it, but (usually) no food for germs to munch on.
[1] https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/12385500/
Ever since COVID, I've been hyper aware of anywhere I'm being confined with people, breathing their air, touching things they were touching, sitting where they were and so on. I feel like I'm hallucinating and can visualize the human germs and filth in the liquids, in the air, everywhere. Airlines are of course the worst, but I'll still bring a mask to any indoor space like a small bar or restaurant, avoid touching anything, avoid touching my own face/eyes. Super attuned to hygiene. Every enclosed space outside of my own home/car feels disgusting and urgent to avoid.
IANAD, but that sounds like clinical mysophobia (germaphobia).
No judgement — I’m sure COVID has done this to many people. But if it’s causing you anxiety or other stress, it may be worth considering talking to someone.
I think, generally, the real risks are overblown. E.g. many people can be anxious about the bacteria on our phones. And they do contain a lot, but most of them are harmless.
As long as you wash your hands when you get home from being in public, and don’t touch your face while in public, and clean your phone if you’ve been in a high risk public area, you’re likely knocking out most real risks.
Again, I’m not an expert. But I’ve done some digging on it, and this is my take, FWIW.
Not to be an alarmist, but... your body is covered with bacteria, viruses, and fungi; literally crawling with microbes, inside and out.
When you smell poop, it’s actually shit particles in the air..lol. Sometimes bacteria comes along for the ride too? Garbage, rotting flesh…yeah.
This is not true.
The smell of poop is from small molecules. Yes, it came from inside someone's bowels, but it's not microbes.
Technically, gas != tiny solid particles.
So, no, you’re not inhaling actual particles.
I don’t think approaching boiling temps is quite enough unless it’s kept there for a long time (see pasteurisation times at various temps). I would agree with the author that if the contamination levels are high I wouldn’t risk it.
boiling is more than enough to kill bacteria in general (Ex: if one had the ability to bring chicken instantly up to a temperature of 160F or so, it be considered perfectly safe. In the sous vide world one might only want to bring it up to 140-150F to not overcook it, and therefore would hold it at that lower temperature for some longer time).
With that said, this is only for bacteria. Bacteria also can produce spores (Ex: the botulism toxin produced by a bacteria, which is produced in an anaerobic environment, and exactly why sous vide cooking at low temperatures can be dangerous, as the anaerobic environment that it can thrive in and if kept at temperaturese in the danger zone where it can thrive can result in the production of botulism that won't be later killed/destroyed by higher temps that kill its producing bacteria)
Well, for coffee it’s brought to near boiling then brew time is typically a few minutes, then it’s largely stored above 140 degrees.
It's a mere anecdote and YMMV but I've had the onboard coffee and tea with a variety of airlines many times over the years and to memory it's never given me trouble.
This varies significantly from person to person, yeah.
I was fine for years until I wasn’t - now I basically restrict myself bottled water and wine, which come from outside the plane. Many airlines flown in the past year around the world too.
Another problem with that is we don't know what made us sick. And if we think airplane coffee is fine but didn't like lunch at the diner, we tend to assume it's the latter.
If the airline really doesn't care about the quality of water, then there might be other things in the water beside bacteria. Boiling will not remove chemical contaminants.
How are these scores so vastly different between airlines?
I understand the water sources may vary (by airport? not sure?), but if the planes are largely manufactured by Boeing and Airbus, how are the onboard water sources / distribution systems getting contaminated?
Delta being a 5.00 means they're doing something different, but what is it & what control do they have over the plumbing, water systems, etc.?
Cleaning practices I imagine.
If you have a holding tank of water like in an airplane, and you never clean it, you’re going to have pathogens build up. Just adding in new fresh water isn’t enough.
Ask anyone who has worked in a fast food place that has an ice machine
Similar reason you often hear that ice machines are full of bacteria... They are seldom fully cleaned by a lot of food places.
What water are they testing? The drinking water on Alaska, for example, is Boxed Water. I'm not sure if that's what they use for coffee and tea, but they didn't actually mention testing the coffee or tea (that I could find).
They do not used bottled (or boxed) water for coffee.
That comes from the coffee machine built into the galley, which uses the aircraft’s onboard potable water tanks.
Those tanks are filled from a hose by the ground crew during refueling.
(At least for major US airlines. I understand some other carriers serve instant coffee packets. Even then, the hot water still comes from the aircraft tanks.)
I wonder how air Canada reconciles this. There was a popular globe and mail article a while ago that gave awful rankings to air Canada's water tanks -- so the company put up signs in the bathroom saying the water is non-potable and called it a day.
Not super comforting if they're then using the same 'non-potable' water to make coffee...
>Not super comforting if they're then using the same 'non-potable' water to make coffee...
It's presumably boiled, which makes it potable?
boiling it will remove bacterias, but not toxins (if there are any).
Is there any reason to expect there would be "toxins", given that it's just water? I can imagine how there might be accumulated toxins it's a pack of chicken breasts left in a hot car for 8 hours, but if it's water it should be fine? After all, boiling water is a tried and true way of making water safe to drink.
Heavy metals [1] Nitrate and nitrite [2] PFAs most probably (couldn’t find anything about this, but since it’s everywhere…)
[1] https://www.webpronews.com/study-exposes-airline-water-conta... [2] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK310709/#:~:text=Beside...
> After all, boiling water is a tried and true way of making water safe to drink.
It's not.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boiling#For_making_water_potab...
Yes, there are substances that slip through, but it works well enough for most cases that it's probably fine. Otherwise you get into weird edge cases like "what if there are prions in the water?!?" or whatever.
Completely orthagonal -- I absolutely can't stand the taste of the "Boxed Water" Alaska uses. I swear I can taste the cardboard or whatever they use to package it. I always bring my own water instead.
Worth a listen to this podcast: https://pjvogt.substack.com/p/wait-should-i-not-be-drinking-...
WTF is with these AI slop header images... does the author actually think an image of a woman crumpling a cup into her face against a backdrop of airplane parts is not going to distract from the post?
The article is from 2023. I wouldn't be too hard on the author as it was still a novelty back then.
True, and they're not doing it now. (Unlike kalzumeus, who's still going at it for some reason.)
> person drinking airline coffee unsure what is in it / Midjourney
I’d rather PJ focus on his podcast rather than making visual art. Akin to using a stock image instead of going out taking a picture instead to save time.
Having no art is better than that art.
Almost any mildly relevant stock image would have been better if having an image was that desirable.
There is no need for an image at all. Then they can focus on their podcast even more...
and wow look at that hand
2023 was a different time…
That’s no hand.
An inlaw who worked as a stewardess (back when they were called "stewardesses") on international routes for many years always carried her own water.
I'll take it, taking a bottled beer from the stewardess is still the safest option.
Beer is literally the reason why civilisation exists today, because it was the only safe source of fluids for the masses for thousands of years.
Think about that when you have your next airplane beer. I sure do when I have one. Bottoms up!
People get incredible creative about identifying problems they need to solve if they have too much free time :D
I'm sure they're correct about a lot of airline water being nasty - no argument there, but the organization/website sounds like it has a mission that is probably at least partly pseudoscience adjacent:
"Mission Center For Food As Medicine & Longevity is a nonprofit organization working to bridge the gap between traditional medicine and the use of food as medicine in the prevention, treatment, and management of disease while also increasing access to these treatments, thereby creating a more equitable food system that will improve health outcomes."
It might not be, but I'm skeptical of most articles coming from organizations sounding like that. Eating healthy and nutritious food is incredibly important and a good diet can prevent certain diseases. Maybe that is all they're trying to say. However, I come across a lot of people who just think you can avoid medicine all together and just eat certain foods and herbs.
Afaik "eating healthy" research is almost always observational. And hard to untangle it from socioeconomical status.
In the last years there is some doubt among researchers that "eating healthy" is the magic cure all. It plays some role, but it may be overblown in the public view.
What is the pseudoscience in that statement? There is no reference to specific foods, superfoods, etc.
Doesn't it differ by aircraft too? I believe the 787 dreamliner has a UV water purification system for potable water.
Before reading TFA, I'd like to bet $50 that if the article includes the rankings, Delta will be at the very top and American Airlines will be at the very bottom
Airline Water Safety Scores At-a-Glance (5.00 = highest rating, 0.00 = lowest):
Major Airlines
Delta Air Lines: 5.00 (Grade A)
Frontier Airlines: 4.80 (Grade A)
Alaska Airlines: 3.85 (Grade B)
Allegiant Air: 3.65 (Grade B)
Southwest Airlines: 3.30 (Grade C)
Hawaiian Airlines: 3.15 (Grade C)
United Airlines: 2.70 (Grade C)
Spirit Airlines: 2.05 (Grade D)
JetBlue: 1.80 (Grade D)
American Airlines: 1.75 (Grade D)
Regional Airlines
GoJet Airlines: 3.85 (Grade B)
Piedmont Airlines: 3.05 (Grade C)
Sun Country Airlines: 3.00 (Grade C)
Endeavor Air: 2.95 (Grade C)
SkyWest Airlines: 2.40 (Grade D)
Envoy Air: 2.30 (Grade D)
PSA Airlines: 2.25 (Grade D)
Air Wisconsin Airlines: 2.15 (Grade D)
Republic Airways: 2.05 (Grade D)
CommuteAir: 1.60 (Grade D)
Mesa Airlines: 1.35 (Grade F)
[edit: formatting]
Nice. Is this from experience?
Yes, it's night and day. From purchase to lounge to flight and even airport terminal, it's a completely different experience. American Airlines is not only bad overall but it's so f dirty everywhere.
And also every time there's a report, they rank this way
As for bag space...
I always take my suitcase and my backpack to the airplane and then I check my suitcase at the gate. Three reasons. First, there are no baggage fees at the gate. Second, I can roll backpack on my suitcase. Third, I get to board early for "helping out". Why wouldn't you do this?
I do only check it if someone else in my party is already checking bags but that turns out to be most of the time for me.
Note: I'm actually replying to a reply that's too deep.
> Why wouldn't you do this?
Normally gate checking is the better option, but you can't do it when flying with stuff that can't go into a carryon: bottles of wine, firearms, and so on.
The advantage of American, anecdotally, is most of their planes in the routes I've been flying have the sideway bag bins that don't fill up, so I don't have to play the standing-in-line and boarding group game.
Gotcha, good to keep in mind. I can't /stand/ dirty fart tubes (though, recently I used Delta and it was fine), but otherwise haven't flown much in the past 5 years.
If you want to go the extra mile (no pun intended), when flying out of an airport that is a major airline hub, avoid that airline at all costs i.e. don't fly United out of EWR, American out of MIA, etc. They tend to be ridiculously busy and crowded.
YMMV, just my $0.02
"Among major airlines, American Airlines has the lowest score of 1.75 (Grade D)."
Yes, but I'd generally rank Alaska above Delta.
Maybe, but Alaska is about 1:4 the size of Delta
If you are flying Southwest and need a drink, ask for a can of water.
I'm a little surprised United is so bad in this. IME I've only seen fresh, sealed water bottles, so it must be the environment? But I can't think of a single actual factor that seemed different on United vs. Delta
This is bad advice:
« Do not wash your hands in the bathroom; use alcohol-based hand sanitizer containing at least 60% alcohol instead. »
Alcohol only kills some pathogens. Notably, it does not kill norovirus. If the water has coliform bacteria, you should wash your hands with soap and water and then use the alcohol hand sanitizer
That people like the author of the article proudly don't wash their hands after being in a bathroom is a huge argument for washing your hands whenever you've been in public and trying to avoid touching your face if you haven't washed your hands.
I don't think this has anything to do with being "proud" when it's part of a study summary that said the water you'd wash with commonly contains e.coli and advises a different cleaning method instead -- misguided as that conclusion may be when considering other types of viruses (I'm not an expert and cannot judge either argument's merit). Seems strange/unfair to lump them in with people that "proudly" (do you know anyone like that??) don't clean their hands
To quote George Carlin (careful, swearwords ahead):
I do not advise taking comedic medical advice.
Oh, it gets a lot better, I just don't want to quote the entire thing. It's very worthwhile to watch this skit in its entirety.
It's the first piece I ever read/saw of G.C., it made a lasting impression...
Quoting from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Carlin#Death
Carlin had a history of heart problems,[82][83] including heart attacks in 1978, 1982, and 1991.[52] He also had an arrhythmia requiring an ablation procedure in 2003, a significant episode of heart failure in 2005, and two angioplasties on undisclosed dates.[84] In the 2022 documentary George Carlin's American Dream, Jerry Hamza—Carlin's manager from 1980 until his death—said Carlin underwent many heart surgeries in a short period toward the end of his life. Carlin's publicist Jeff Abraham said that he once lifted his shirt after coming to a gig from the hospital to show Abraham his torso, whereupon Abraham said it looked like a science project.
Dude had his first heart attack at the age of 41, and lived four years less than today's median life expectancy in the United States.
Unfortunately there are people out there (a non-trivial number) who actually believe that kind of macho BS. Knowing that, Carlin's jokes don't hit the same.
I don't think that's a good argument. If I went this route, I would have to forgo Monty Python, Key & Peele, Mitchell and Webb, and god knows who else. There are always people believing this hyperbole, that's why it's funny in the first place.
But the good jokes either go extremely over the top, or actually have a joke part. The quoted one just repeats a thing that people believe. Reading it, I can't tell if it's supposed to be mocking the position, or is he a genuine grumpy guy complaining about kids these days and their cleaning.
I'm sure you can find the whole sketch on Youtube. I can only recommend watching it, unless you are allergic to swearwords - there are lots of those. Look for [George Carlin Germs]. But I guess the audience on HN generally knows how to figure it out by themselves.
You're welcome ;)
Sanitizer also does not remove dirt and grime from your hands.
At least the dirt and grime will have fewer pathogens
Unfortunately the reason you need mechanical cleaning is that dirt and grime prevent disinfectants from reaching pathogens or being effective once they do reach them.
Not when the "dirt" in question may be literal feces.
And then touch the knob to open the door... the same knob half the other lavatory users touched with completely unwashed hands.
You should push the knob with a paper towel instead. I do this at all small public restrooms.
Good job the Brits are asleep as they’d be cracking up at these comments.
Related rant: The widespread stupidity around bathroom doors calls the intelligence of humans into (even more) question.
Airplane-bathroom doors open out because they must. But the number of public-bathroom doors that inexplicably open INWARD is mind-boggling. Instead of simply having doors open outward, millions of bathrooms create mountains of paper waste by having them open inward and encouraging users to waste a paper towel to grab its handle.
Galling stupidity: https://www.instagram.com/p/BlO_-jmg4o7/
The reason that interior doors in general open inwards is fire safety. Doors that only open outwards can be obstructed from the outside, preventing evacuation.
> Airplane-bathroom doors open out
It's a mix. There's a number of split doors designs that break in half and fold inwards.
More places are adopting bi-directional doors and foot handles now.
Or, rather than trying to keep your hands sterile which is a futile exercise, doing what the military teaches - keep your hands away from your face (eyes, nose, mouth) and don't scratch your skin.
The reason you care about germs on your hands is because they make you sick when you stick them in your body orifaces. Otherwise, those germs don't matter.
Wash hands before meals otherwise.
> Wash hands before meals otherwise.
considering the topic is about airlines and flights, you would presumably be eating a meal after this and not be able to easily wash your hands again.
This is a pretty dumb report overall. What do I do if I'm on a plane with a 3.85 rating, or a "B"? How are these measures supposed to influence my decision making? I'll just follow the spirit of the ridiculous recommendations:
NEVER drink any water onboard; only drink alcohol-based hand sanitizer containing at least 60% alcohol instead
The better advice is to ask the flight attendants for a cup of bottled water and use that instead, especially for brushing teeth.
> especially for brushing teeth
As someone in a dental family and with excellent teeth, you absolutely do not need to brush your teeth on a flight.
Not everyone is the same. My teeth and gums are not that good and I definitely feel much better brushing them after every meal (though I'm aware I should wait after acidic food).
(time-wise, I started increasing brushing after the situation got worse. The root cause for the worsening was not seeing a dentist for two years. Don't do that, definitely see a dentist periodically. And the dentist seems happy with my brushing decision, need to do as much as I can to prevent plaque formation)
For airplanes, I buy three small bottles of water before flight (15hr flight). And I use that for drinking, rinsing and washing my toothbrush. While we cannot bring bottled water from outside the airport to the embarking area, there are usually shops in that area that sell small bottles.
As someone who's never had even a single cavity, when I brush it, it's not because of dental health but for comfort.
Sure, I hate the way my teeth feel if I don't brush. But I also don't care enough to use a gross plane bathroom.
If I'm that concerned, I'd use some mouthwash.
If I'm taking an 8 hour flight after hours at the airport, transit, etc. and am already using the plane bathroom for physiological reasons, I don't mind a quick brush with bottled water...
16 hour flight?
If you have good dental hygiene missing a brushing shouldn’t be a big deal. It can wait until you reach your destination.
It's fine. If you're consistent, you can go a few days and it won't make a difference to your health.
You'll survive.
There's a YouTuber named Stig Shift who chronicles his job as an airline mechanic and he insists the bathroom water is clean enough to drink.
It says right on the bathroom faucet that it isn’t for drinking - anyone brushing their teeth with the sink water is a fool.
Newer planes do not have that sign and even supply paper drinking cups https://i0.wp.com/roomreviews.net/wp-content/uploads/2018/06...
I think that's a bit of a harsh take. People will use what they can get, and they may be assuming the signage was placed there for compliance/legal box-ticking reasons rather than because it will actually make them sick.
If you fail to heed a warning, though, the law provides that you assume the risk of injury that could result and contributed to your own injury. Without assumption of risk, anyone who provides any services would be strictly liable for any injury, even for those that don’t result from inherently dangerous activities. That would mark a significant change in the law and would suddenly make a lot of activities and services infeasible to provide.
isnt most of the advantage of soap is that it gets the germs off your skin and washes them down the drain. the soap does not have to kill them to work.
It's both. But you rinse the soap off, and if that's just bringing more coliform bacteria onto your hands, you then need a way to deal with those.
I thought that soap did something more than just wash the nasties off - something about it interfering with cell walls of viruses/bacteria and therefore killing them
Looked it up
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC3037063/
Handwashing is thought to be effective for the prevention of transmission of diarrhoea pathogens. However it is not conclusive that handwashing with soap is more effective at reducing contamination with bacteria associated with diarrhoea than using water only. In this study 20 volunteers contaminated their hands deliberately by touching door handles and railings in public spaces. They were then allocated at random to (1) handwashing with water, (2) handwashing with non-antibacterial soap and (3) no handwashing. Each volunteer underwent this procedure 24 times, yielding 480 samples overall. Bacteria of potential faecal origin (mostly Enterococcus and Enterobacter spp.) were found after no handwashing in 44% of samples. Handwashing with water alone reduced the presence of bacteria to 23% (p < 0.001). Handwashing with plain soap and water reduced the presence of bacteria to 8% (comparison of both handwashing arms: p < 0.001). The effect did not appear to depend on the bacteria species. Handwashing with non-antibacterial soap and water is more effective for the removal of bacteria of potential faecal origin from hands than handwashing with water alone and should therefore be more useful for the prevention of transmission of diarrhoeal diseases.
Why not use antibacterial soap instead of NON-antibacterial soap? Wouldn’t it be even more effective?
https://www.fda.gov/consumers/consumer-updates/skip-antibact...
It gets into your gut and kills beneficial bacteria.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gut_microbiota#Effects_of_anti...
The implication of antibacterial soap is that it contains antibiotics, which leads to resistance in bacterial populations. Non-antibacterial soap is a misnomer, it is plenty effective against bacteria, but kills the bacteria mechanically.
Also it doesn’t kill c diff bacteria
Presumably the number they are doing is less than 2 otherwise this is disgusting.
It makes me wonder, how much money is actually wasted by this? It also feels like violations should be the primary funding for these agencies. (Probably creates perverse incentives though)
Your second sentence is so incongruent with the rest of your post. Low regulation always, always, always leads to abuse and whatever-I-can-get-away-with behavior. Why would you love that world?
If the EPA had 100X its current staff, 100X its funding, 100X the teeth, 100X the enforcement, and 100X the fines collected, we would probably live in a paradise.
I'd like to see a similar test for airports. I always fill up my water bottle in the airport (at one of the water fountains for filling bottles) before boarding.
Don't airlines serve bottled water? Alaska has Boxed Water (same as bottled water).
I also started doing this since it seems to be a nobrainer to bring some empty water container rather than paying outrageous prices on bottled water... But a couple days ago I flew to the US through Heathrow and saw some guy drinking with his mouth from one of those refill stations, and now I'm not sure anymore because I feel like one in n people will touch/contaminate it.
Similarly when I use a public restroom it is shocking to me how many people don't even follow the most basic personal hygiene.
I find it absolutely puzzling that people refill their bottles in those public fountains.
Last time I was in SFO I saw dozens of people doing that in the time it took from deplaning till boarding an Uber and all I could do was scratch my head
(2023)
The article says 2026 report and has a byline date of December 29, 2025
So it's from the future? nice
These people should just live in a plastic bubble.
This doesn’t make sense. One of the airlines with a grade C uses cans of water on board, yet the article’s advice is to only drink bottled water?
My understanding is the water tested in this study is the water in the lavatory faucet and what they use to make hot beverages onboard. If you ask a flight attendant for water you would always get water from a can/bottle/box depending on airline, at least based on my limited experience.
- "The ADWR requires airlines to take samples from their water tanks to test for coliform bacteria and possible E. coli."
I believe the study is based on water in the tank of the passenger airline and the advice given is to not drink that water, on average.
They tested the water from the tanks, which apparently is used to prepare hot drinks.
tl;dr some airlines have poo in their water. Best advice is to treat any water not coming out of a bottle on an airplane as non potable. Wash your hands with it and that’s about it and even then a good hand sanitizer afterwards is a good idea.
Way more important than not drinking the water is not breathing the air.
Please wear an N95 when you lock yourself in a tiny steel tube with hundreds of others. If not for your safety, do it for others.
During boarding/unboarding, sure, but during the actual flight when the aircrafts intake/recirculation system is running you're getting much better air quality than basically any building you'd be in. “Tiny steel tube with hundreds of others” is a _very_ misleading statement.
In-flight is quite risky: long-haul flights have much more covid transmission than short flights, which should not happen if transmission only occurred during takeoff and landing.
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC11203943/
Interesting, although it's worth noting that the study specifically calls out that “Third, we cannot exclude other risks in air travel beyond in-flight risks, e.g., queuing for security or customs or boarding the plane, as well as the waiting time on the runway or transfers to terminals in public buses”.
(To the people who downvoted that comment: shame on you)
The advance air circulation system doesn't help that much with the lady coughing and blowing her nose right next to me and the filthy child touching every seat armrest as he walks down the aisle.
If the comment said that, I wouldn't have said anything, but it repeated nonsense about the density of people sealed in a metal tube, which is more or less nonsense.
A bit sad that this sound advice is downvoted (maybe just out of topic rather than a disagree?).
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC11203943/ shows that covid transmission goes up exponentially (x1.5 per flight hour) without masking.
I guess people really don't like putting something on their face. Nobody advices only washing hands and being generally healthy against getting STIs; the advice is blocking the pathogens in the first place, I'm not sure why our lungs don't deserve as much protection.
(plus masking makes the air more humid which helps with the dry air I feel)