Airport toilets ‘teeming with germs and filth’

MELBOURNE - The profusion of germs at airports can cause travellers to fall ill with colds and flus, a top Aussie travel doctor has warned.

According to Dr Deborah Mills, from the Travel Medical Alliance, several people believe airconditioning on planes spreads illness, but actually the airport are a hotbed of germs.

“The airport toilets are filthy,” News.com.au quoted Mills, as saying.

Mills said studies show almost a third of people don’t wash their hands when going to restrooms at airports.

She said: “Cold and flu viruses live for at least two days on surfaces.

“You probably have a few hundred people on a plane and a million people at an airport like Bangkok.”

Taking about airconditioning on a plane and chances of catching colds, Mills said: “The air on the plane is funnelled through the jet engines to purify it which kills all the germs.

“The way the airconditioning works is that when the plane is running it only goes over a few seats and then gets sucked in.

“It’s dangerous on planes when the plane is stationary and the airconditioning is off, but when the plane is running and the airconditioning is on the chance of getting something is the same as your local shopping centre.” (ANI)