Snagging a window seat in on a flight may get even harder.
Scientists are now saying that sitting in an aisle seat on an airplane makes a passenger more exposed to germs, the Daily Mail reported on Sunday.
It puts you much closer to fellow passengers going back and forth to the bathroom, and some hold onto the seats as they walk by for balance. This makes contamination much easier.
Scientists at the University of Arizona swabbed the arm rests, sinks, overhead lockers and other of them most touched surfaces on over 20 flights. Dr. Charles Gerba found that isle seats usually had more germs than those by the window or in the middle of the row, as they were touched by a greater array of people as they moved around during the flight.
If possible, Gerba recommends avoiding the in-flight bathrooms because they are used by up to 75 different people, but aren't cleaned until after the flight, Lew Rockwell reported.
"The airplane restroom is the germiest you're going to come across," he said. "There's so much traffic and no one cleans them."
The fold-down tables on the back of the seats should also be avoided until they're wiped down completely, Gerba added. They contained backterial and viruses like MRSA and the flu.
Eating off an upwiped tables was akin to eating off a toilet seat, he said.
"Tables often have large numbers of bacteria because they're not commonly disinfected and cleaned between every flight," Gerba said.
One silverlining is that, contrary to popular belief, the germs aren't spread through recirculated air in the plane's cabin.
