Most travelers either remain blissfully unaware of facts, or just try not to think about it, but a new study released today shows what we’ve kinda, sorta always known: public transportation – from subway cars and buses all the way up to commercial airplanes are among the most germ-filled places Americans (and others) go.
Indeed, four out of 10 Americans (39% to be precise) say they still choose to travel when they’re sick. That means that whether they – or we? – recognize or not, the same germs that made them sick are being spread broadly through a public that increasingly travels both short and long distances via public conveyances.
During the 2014 Ebola virus scare many people urged the government to shut down airline operations, … [+]
And not only are sick travelers exposing those who sit or stand right next them while traveling to the illness from which they suffer. They’re also exposing potentially hundreds of additional travelers further away from them or who many hours later touch the same surfaces on trains, buses, airplanes, taxi cabs and various facilities at train and bus stations and airports. That’s because 60% of people who travel while they are sick also say they don’t use germicides, cleaning wipes or other products to wipe down those surfaces they’ve touched during their travels.
Those are just some of the most notable – and ickiest – results from new research done for Vital Vio, a company that markets UV light-emitting lamps that the company claims can kill 99% of the bacteria and other germs left on surfaces. See the full report here.
Travel long has been known as a primary path along which diseases ranging from mild communicable “cold” viruses to deadly disease like Zika, Tuberculosis, and particularly hard-to-treat varieties of the flu can be spread. Yet the hundreds of millions of people who travel annually by various means of public transportation either have never gotten that word or, for whatever reason, ignore or forget that fact. Travel has been blamed for helping t rapidly spread some of the world’s most deadly diseases in the 20th Century and even in the first two decades of the 21st Century.
In fact, researchers tell us that the sheer volume of people who enter and exit subways, trains and airplanes in any given day makes those transportation vehicles very high-risk environments where more bacteria is found per square inch than would be on the toilet seats in those travelers’ homes.
Vital Vio’s 50-page report, which also details the cleanliness attitudes and germ-protection steps taken by Americans at home and at work, notes that the average person encounters more than 60,000 different types of bacteria each day. While most people’s immune systems render nearly all of those potential health dangers impotent the Centers of Disease Control and the World Health Organization agree that there are growing numbers of Americans each year who get sick, and a growing number who die die as a result of deadly viruses and antibiotic-resistant bacteria. And public transportation is a frequent factor in the contracting those potentially deadline illnesses.
On a personal note, in 2018 I contracted a so-called “super bug” resistant to most forms of antibiotics. In my case, travel was not involved. But I felt horrible and ran high fevers for a week. Plus a lengthy hospitalization and drug treatments that required daily infusions of high-powered and highly-concentrated antibiotics for an entire month cost my insurance company and me a combined total of more than $50,000. And that’s not counting the impact of a month’s lost work productivity.
In 2019 the World Health Organization expects 700,000 people globally to die from such illnesses and that the number globally will grow to more than 10 million deaths annually by 2050. Vital Vio polled more than 1,200 U.S. residents over age 18 about their daily cleaning habits, the ways they protect themselves from disease while traveling, and even their routines for cleaning and sanitizing their mobile devices.
The results showed, among other things, that more than a quarter of people – 27% – don’t wash their hands or use hand sanitizer after traveling on public transportation. And 32% of men admit they don’t wash or sanitize their hands after traveling, compared with only 23% of women who say they don’t take steps to clean their hands after using public transportation.
Thus it’s incongruous – even ironic – that a large majority of Americans says they so much want to avoid using the bathrooms on planes, trains and other public transportation vehicles or facilities that they would rather sit for long periods with a full bladder than use such public restrooms.
Indeed, 68% overall said they would do that. In fact, 45% said they would “hold it” for up to two hours in order to avoid using a public restroom while traveling. And 33% said they would control their bladder for up to five hours to avoid using the restroom on public transport vehicles or in transportation facilities like airports and rail terminals. Eleven percent even said they would avoid using a public transport restroom for more than five hours, if necessary. Perhaps not surprisingly, 74% of women said they are more likely to make themselves uncomfortable in that way in order to avoid using public restrooms while traveling. That compares with “just” 61% of men who said they’re willing to suffer in order to stay out of bathrooms on public transportation vehicles or in public transportation facilities.
About 38% of Millennials will hold off on emptying their bladders for three to five hours rather than use a public transport restroom, and 14% of t hem say they will hold it for three to five hours.
The study also uncovered some interesting – and hard to square – generational differences in the cleanliness habits of U.S. travelers. Millennials – typically those born between 1981 and 1996 – tend to travel more when they are ill more than those who are part of the Baby Boom generation – those born between 1946 and 1964, typically. While only about 27% of Baby Boomers say they travel when sick, 43% of Millennials say they do so. Yet, Millennials are twice as likely to wipe down any areas they might have touched on public transit. About 43% of millennials do that, compared with just 21% of Boomers.
Taking things a bit farther, half of all those surveyed said they would rather eat a sandwich on a public bus or subway than in their own bathroom, compared with 31% who said they’d prefer to munch on a sandwich while in their own bathroom. But only 39% of Baby Boomers would eat a sandwich on public transit compared with 55% of Millennials who say they’d do that. Women are only slightly less likely to eat a sandwich onboard public transit than men: 48% to 52%.
For more information on the subject, readers can go to the CDC’s webpage on preventing the spread of disease while flying.
Vitalvio
