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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
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I feel bad for her but I have to wonder, how does this person function on a day to day basis? If their allergy is so severe that other people eating peanuts around her would harm her, how does she leave the house? How did she navigate the airport?
Peanuts are not ubiquitous in public. Being near several people eating them in a fairly enclosed space is very different than walking through and airport and someone 25 feet away has a bag of peanuts.
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