Health - Wellness
The Best Place To Sit On A Plane If You Want To Stay Healthy
By ZRINKA PETERS
With the holiday season comes reunions, feasts, and traveling, and although there is always the potential risk of exposure to illness, there is a way to minimize it when flying. If you have ever wondered whether your seat location makes any difference to the risk of infection, it does, and here’s the best place to sit.
The window seat is the best place to sit on a plane if you want to stay healthy, as it reduces the number of people within the easy striking range of any airborne particles. Charles Gerba, a professor of virology who has also studied germs on planes, explains, “people are more likely to get ill if they sit on the aisle because people are touching surfaces and walking by.”
Travel by plane hasn't actually proven to be riskier than many other common activities, and planes actually have high-efficiency filtration and ventilation systems that minimize airborne transmission of virus-infected droplets. However, getting the risk level down to zero in an airport is impossible when considering large crowds and high-touch areas like bathrooms or handrails.