For anyone who has flight coach, a trip to the lavatory is the pits, even if you're 36,000 feet up in the sky. American company Boeing revealed its self-cleaning plane lavatory on Thursday.
The Boeing lavatory includes touchless – because nobody wants to touch anything at a common and public lavatory – faucet, trash bin, soap dispenser, toilet lid and hand dryer.
"We're trying to alleviate the anxiety we all face when using a restroom that gets a workout during a flight," said environmental performance director for Boeing Commercial Airplanes Jeanne Yu.
The best of the Boeing self-cleaning lavatory is the FAR ultraviolet light (UV) light that eradicates 99.9 percent of germs. FAR ultraviolet is different from UVB or UVA that people get from tanning salons as it has a different wavelength.
Another feature? The sanitizing FAR UV also helps remove foul odors. The self-cleaning starts when the lavatory is unoccupied. It only takes three seconds to sanitize the entire lavatory, which means people don't need to wait in line.
"It's for use while you're in the air, to disinfect between those deeper cleanings," said Boeing spokesperson Bret Jensen.
Boeing's prototype of the self-cleaning lavatory floods the sink, countertops and toilet seat with the FAR UV light. Unfortunately, we need to wait until we can step into Boeing's plane lavatory of the future. The company is still in conducting further studies before the self-cleaning bathrooms can be offered to airlines.
We don't have to worry too much while waiting for the self-cleaning bathroom though, as a survey found that the dirtiest place in airplanes is actually not the lavatory flush button. It's the tray table with 2,155 colony-forming units of bacteria (CFU) for every square inch. The overhead air vent is actually dirtier with 285 CFU per square inch compared to the lavatory flush button that only has 265 CFU per square inch. And the lavatory stall lock, well, it only has 70 CFU per square inch.
The survey eventually found that – surprise! – bathrooms were some of the cleaner areas tested in airplanes. Cleaning schedules meant these areas are sanitized more regularly compared to, well, the tray tables. It looks like once we get to see how clean Boeing's bathroom can get, we might also want our food tray to wipe that spilled juice for us.
