The air inside an enclosed airplane can be more disgusting than previously thought, but a teenager found a way to make it cleaner. The 17-year-old teenager used computer simulation to show how airplane germs spread during travel.
Raymond Wang worked out how germs travel on planes and what can be done to curb these pathogens to prevent the spread of disease. In a recent TED (Technology, Entertainment, Design) talk, he explained how he built computer simulations to showcase how germs move around inside an enclosed aircrafts.
He said that as air flows into and around the cabin, germs or disease-causing pathogens spread from one passenger to another. This will shed light on various diseases that were thought to have been passed through passengers of aircrafts.
"When we sneeze, the air gets swirled round multiple times before it has a chance to go out through the filter," Wang explained.
Airborne diseases like SARS (Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome), Ebola virus disease and bird flu have caused public scare and international alerts for the past two decades. Wang hopes his design could aid in stemming the spread of these pathogens during flights.
His device, a tiny fan, can recirculate air out of the cabin instead of pumping air around continuously. The Global Inlet Director, which is a patent-pending system, can make an aircraft become pathogen-expulsing machine that can remove disease-causing germs. The device costs around $1,000.
"With this, we're able to reduce pathogen transmission by about 55 times, and increase fresh-air inhalation by about 190 percent," Wang added.
During his talk, he explained how his interest in developing his project was triggered during the Ebola outbreak in 2015. He started looking at case studies of how pathogens had spread. He found that most cases were linked to flights. For instance, a man who had bird flu infected co-passengers during a flight. Another 17 people inside the aircraft developed the infection and initiated an outbreak.
The device, which is affordable for airlines around the world, could save not only billions of dollars but also thousands of lives. He said that the SARS outbreak that happened from 2002 to 2004, was estimated to have cost the aviation industry $40 million.
"And in the future, a big disease outbreak could actually cost the world in excess of $3 trillion," Wang added. He hopes his design will be used as a cost-effective way to fight global epidemics like Ebola, SARS and bird flu.
Raymond Wang won the top prize in the 2015 Intel Science and Engineering Fair for his invention that circulates fresh air on planes and reduces transmission of germs between passengers. He took home $75,000 for the idea, which he claims would improve the availability of clean air inside planes and ward off disease-causing germs by reducing its concentration by more than 50 times.
The Bathroom Is Not The Dirtiest Part Of The Plane
A microbiologist measured the amount of pathogens present in an airplane and found that the bathroom is not the dirtiest part of the cabin. When Travelmath.com sent a microbiologist to measure how dirty cabins and other parts of the plane are, they were in it for a surprise.
Airplanes and airports are dirtier than the average home with the dirtiest spot not the bathroom but the tray tables where passengers' food are placed. This is where passengers write, read and hold unto during the flight.
