254
Woman with severe allergy ‘left with no choice’ but to buy every packet of peanuts on flight
(www.independent.co.uk)
this post was submitted on 08 Aug 2023
254 points (92.9% liked)
Not The Onion
11933 readers
1144 users here now
Welcome
We're not The Onion! Not affiliated with them in any way! Not operated by them in any way! All the news here is real!
The Rules
Posts must be:
- Links to news stories from...
- ...credible sources, with...
- ...their original headlines, that...
- ...would make people who see the headline think, “That has got to be a story from The Onion, America’s Finest News Source.”
Comments must abide by the server rules for Lemmy.world and generally abstain from trollish, bigoted, or otherwise disruptive behavior that makes this community less fun for everyone.
And that’s basically it!
founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
The air within an airplane cabin is recirculated every five or ten minutes. A real severe peanut allergy would be triggered by anyone on the plane eating peanuts.
are planes cleansed that thoroughly between flights? I assume one would have to worry about who was eating what in the area from a previous flight with an allergy that severe
No, they are not.
The majority of airplanes are equipped with HEPA filters. As in, removing 99,97% of particles over 0.3 micron in size. The unfiltered air is fed in from the outside. It's pretty clean and not a consideration for allergens like peanut particles.
Source: https://www.nationalgeographic.com/travel/article/how-clean-is-the-air-on-your-airplane-coronavirus-cvd
HEPA filters remove 99.97% of particles that are 0.3 micron in size. (That is the size of particles they're tested with, as it's the most difficult to filter.) They remove over 99.97% of particles larger or smaller than 0.3 microns.
They are vacuumed and trash removed but they aren't wiped down from top to bottom
Living with allergies such as a severe peanut allergy is all about mitigating risk
In most open areas you can be cautious about what you touch and who you stand near to. In enclosed spaces such as airplanes, the risk is substantial and mitigating it requires as close to an absence of peanuts as possible
And peanuts are special in how easily they trigger severe reactions. Of all my son's allergies, peanuts are the one that scare us
I would hope the air is filtered before recirculating.
It's sort of is. But mostly they just mix it with a bit of outside air bumped up to pressure and release the difference, but it's not really filtered, except in the sense that over time it will be filtered because the contaminated air will eventually all leave.
I'm sure they have filters like cars have filters but they're not going to remove micro particles.
When did they remove HEPA filters from modern aircraft?
That seems extremely stupid when airplanes are already major disease vectors, especially after covid.
Most aircraft have HEPA filters. This was pretty regularly discussed during covid.
Aircraft ironically actually had cleaner air back when they allowed smoking, because they then actually did have to filter the air.
That just sounds like utter bullshit mate
I assume they filter it in some way, but okay.
Air in a pressurised plane isn't recirculated, it's replaced with new air from outside.
It is recirculated and fresh air is mixed with it.