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Quality of drinking water varies significantly by airline
- throw-12-16 10mo agoThese people should just live in a plastic bubble.
- deleted 10mo ago[deleted]
- tagami 10mo agoIf you are flying Southwest and need a drink, ask for a can of water.
- tevon 10mo agoWorth a listen to this podcast: https://pjvogt.substack.com/p/wait-should-i-not-be-drinking-airline https://pjvogt.substack.com/p/wait-should-i-not-be-drinking-...
- phyzome 10mo agoWTF 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?
- superchink 10mo agoand wow look at that hand 2023 was a different time…
- thfuran 10mo agoThat’s no hand.
- azza2110 10mo agoThe article is from 2023. I wouldn't be too hard on the author as it was still a novelty back then.
- phyzome 10mo agoTrue, and they're not doing it now. (Unlike kalzumeus, who's still going at it for some reason.)
- barbazoo 10mo ago> 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.
- nkrisc 10mo agoHaving no art is better than that art. Almost any mildly relevant stock image would have been better if having an image was that desirable.
- phyzome 10mo agoThere is no need for an image at all. Then they can focus on their podcast even more...
- barbazoo 10mo agoGoogle probably want's the website to be in that format so I'm guessing it's SEO.
- phyzome 10mo agoThis 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
- deleted 10mo ago[deleted]
- saagarjha 10mo agoSanitizer also does not remove dirt and grime from your hands.
- jagged-chisel 10mo agoAt least the dirt and grime will have fewer pathogens
- jaggederest 10mo agoUnfortunately the reason you need mechanical cleaning is that dirt and grime prevent disinfectants from reaching pathogens or being effective once they do reach them.
- phyzome 10mo agoNot when the "dirt" in question may be literal feces.
- airstrike 10mo agoThe better advice is to ask the flight attendants for a cup of bottled water and use that instead, especially for brushing teeth.
- sneak 10mo agoIt says right on the bathroom faucet that it isn’t for drinking - anyone brushing their teeth with the sink water is a fool.
- airstrike 10mo agoBefore 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
- Kiboneu 10mo agoNice. Is this from experience?
- airstrike 10mo agoYes, 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
- the__alchemist 10mo agoThe 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.
- codazoda 10mo agoAs 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.
- tomjakubowski 10mo ago> 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.
- munchler 10mo ago(2023)
- 0xbadcafebee 10mo agoThe article says 2026 report and has a byline date of December 29, 2025
- knocte 10mo agoSo it's from the future? nice
- cmiles8 10mo agotl;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.
- stogot 10mo agoThis 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?
- decimaldesign 10mo ago- "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.
- larnik 10mo agoMy 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.
- Dansvidania 10mo agoThey tested the water from the tanks, which apparently is used to prepare hot drinks.
- 0xbadcafebee 10mo ago"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
- pama 10mo agoEven 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.
- ryandrake 10mo agoEver 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.
- pton_xd 10mo agoNot to be an alarmist, but... your body is covered with bacteria, viruses, and fungi; literally crawling with microbes, inside and out.
- kelipso 10mo agoWhen you smell poop, it’s actually shit particles in the air..lol. Sometimes bacteria comes along for the ride too? Garbage, rotting flesh…yeah.
- bolangi 10mo agoAn inlaw who worked as a stewardess (back when they were called "stewardesses") on international routes for many years always carried her own water.
- 7thaccount 10mo agoI'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.
- Dansvidania 10mo agoWhat is the pseudoscience in that statement? There is no reference to specific foods, superfoods, etc.
- theragra 10mo agoAfaik "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.
- fifteenforty 10mo agoWay 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.
- cwillu 10mo agoDuring 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.
- ryandrake 10mo agoThe 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.
- cwillu 10mo agoIf 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.
- Krssst 10mo agoIn-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/ https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC11203943/
- cwillu 10mo agoInteresting, 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)
- ch1234 10mo agoHow 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.?
- bitmasher9 10mo agoCleaning 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.
- kalleboo 10mo agoAsk anyone who has worked in a fast food place that has an ice machine
- mlrtime 10mo agoSimilar reason you often hear that ice machines are full of bacteria... They are seldom fully cleaned by a lot of food places.
- godelski 10mo ago> 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)
- ryandrake 10mo agoYour 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.
- godelski 10mo ago> Why would you love that world? 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?"
- sammy2255 10mo agoDoesn't it differ by aircraft too? I believe the 787 dreamliner has a UV water purification system for potable water.
- deleted 10mo ago[deleted]
- RandallBrown 10mo agoWhat 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).
- tjohns 10mo agoThey 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.)
- chrisfosterelli 10mo agoI 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...
- gruez 10mo ago>Not super comforting if they're then using the same 'non-potable' water to make coffee... It's presumably boiled, which makes it potable?
- illiac786 10mo agoboiling it will remove bacterias, but not toxins (if there are any).
- gruez 10mo agoIs 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.
- multisport 10mo agoI'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
- insane_dreamer 10mo agoI'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).
- sva_ 10mo agoI 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.
- airstrike 10mo agoI 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
- insane_dreamer 10mo agoThe water stations for bottles are not the same as the fountains you can drink out of. There is no way to drink from them or place your mouth anywhere near it.
- sva_ 10mo agoI'll take it, taking a bottled beer from the stewardess is still the safest option.
- beAbU 10mo agoBeer 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!
- tessierashpool9 10mo agoPeople get incredible creative about identifying problems they need to solve if they have too much free time :D