‘Eurowings should be ashamed of how they handled this situation,’ says passenger
One thing in advance: Leah Williams was not forced to buy all packages of peanuts on board – on the contrary, our purser tried to offer her an alternative solution by informing all passengers sitting around her about Leah’s allergy. She agreed at first but then decided to still buy all the packages.
The airline says it is “unable to guarantee that the aircraft is free of foodstuffs that may trigger an allergic reaction, such as peanuts”, because passengers are allowed to bring their own food onboard.
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.
I would hope the air is filtered before recirculating.
It’s sort of is. But mostly they just mix it with a bit of outside air bumped up to pressure and release the difference, but it’s not really filtered, except in the sense that over time it will be filtered because the contaminated air will eventually all leave.
I’m sure they have filters like cars have filters but they’re not going to remove micro particles.
When did they remove HEPA filters from modern aircraft?
That seems extremely stupid when airplane are already major disease vectors, especially after covid.
Most aircraft have HEPA filters. This was pretty regularly discussed during covid.
Aircraft ironically actually had cleaner air back when they allowed smoking, because they then actually did have to filter the air.
Air in a pressurised plane isn’t recirculated, it’s replaced with new air from outside.
It is recirculated and fresh air is mixed with it.
I assume they filter it in some way, but okay.
Yeah I had that thought too but if this were the case, would you take a life threatening risk that no one else on the plane has peanuts? Wouldn’t you drive instead? Or take a means of public transportation where they don’t regularly sell your allergen?
That’s not necessarily feasible. Maybe she has a schedule? Doesn’t have a car? Doesn’t have a license?
Also, some reactions are uncomfortable but not deadly. I have an anaphylactic allergy to tree nuts, as in, all true nuts (as peanuts are a legume, i’m fine with them). However, I’ve never had an anaphylactic reaction, though I was prescribed an EpiPen and told it could become worse with no warning. I get oral itchiness, stinging lips and mouth, heartburn, acid reflux, and diarrhea from actually eating nuts. I’m not sure what it is like for people who are sensitive to the airborne level. It might just resemb le environmental allergies like sneezing, red eyes and so forth. And if you do have to use an EpiPen, it’s painful to inject and then you have to go to the hospital afterwards. Not certain death, again, but uncomfortable and inconvenient.
Very cautiously.
I imagine she navigated those things with great difficulty and made the best decisions she could. She, like any other person with a medical condition or disability, exists in a world that usually will be hostile to her survival. Yet she must still exist within it. Sometimes people have to do things like take flights and rarely can someone afford to take measures that would best protect them (like a private flight or something in this case). Sounds like she didn’t want to announce her private medical information to everyone around her so she did what she could to keep safe, buy all the peanuts. Ideally she wouldn’t have to, peanut allergies are pretty well known and if we cared about increasing access for people not having peanuts for sale on planes is a pretty simple step. Until then people will keep being put into scenarios like this then scrutinized for the choices they make.
She did actually agree to have that information shared with the other passengers and then still bought all the peanuts. I’m not saying she’s faking her allergy or something, I’m trying to wrap my head around her train of thought here. You can also take a car, a train, a bus, all means of transportation where the transport company doesn’t sell you peanuts. Yeah it’s less convenient but shit man, it won’t kill you.
Ideally she wouldn’t have to, peanut allergies are pretty well known and if we cared about increasing access for people not having peanuts for sale on planes is a pretty simple step
100% agree with this though
Sounds like she either didn’t trust the solution and did what she could to make herself as safe as she could
She claims she offered to tell the people around her not to buy them but the airline refused. The airline says they had agreed to do that but she decided to buy them all anyway. So it wasn’t about giving up private medical information (which wouldn’t make much sense anyway since she announced it to the world through this article). There’s also the fact that you’re very rarely “forced” to fly anywhere, especially in Europe. I just checked Google Maps and a flight from London to Düsseldorf is a little over an hour. There are train options for about 5 and half hours. That’s obviously a pretty big difference, but definitely workable if the allergy is really that severe. There’s also the fact she could’ve called ahead of time and asked about options instead of trying to strongarm the flight attendants into doing what she wanted.
And yeah, it wouldn’t be that difficult to not sell peanuts but that’s not the only thing people are allergic too. Unless they were going to not sell any snacks and not allow any outside food, it’d be impossible to prevent all allergens. That’s one of those things that the only possible solution is the person with the disorder to do their best to mitigate exposure, which means making sacrifices like taken a few trains for 6 hours instead of a convenient flight. There’s lots of people that due to various restrictions can’t always take the most convenient option.
Seriously, if you are that hypersensitive then you should protect yourself not by manipulating others but by, say, wearing a mask, gloves, etc.
A quick bit of googling indicates this was probably an Airbus 320 which another Google shows is about 123 feet long. Being generous and allowing 20 foot for cabin, loos, etc, does this mean her whole life she’s never been within 100 foot of any nut?
A 2004 study by Simonte et al. exposed 29 severely peanut allergic patients to a double-blind inhalation challenge to 3oz of peanut butter (or soy butter, both masked for smell) just 12 inches from the nose. As well, a pea sized drop of either masked butter was smeared on the skin for 1 minute, and then was removed. In both exposures, no one developed any allergic reactions. There were 3 patients who developed localized erythema and 5 developing localized pruritus from the peanut butter skin contact, but 5 also developed erythema with soy butter skin contact, which demonstrates that butters on the skin can cause irritation but not generalized reactions. The authors concluded that casual contact or inhalation of peanut butter was highly unlikely to cause any symptoms.
In 2016, Jin et al re-replicated these findings within a cabin of an airplane in flight. They noted surface contamination of Ara h 2 on unwashed tray tables after someone ate peanut over them, and among 7 air filters measuring Ara h 2 content when placed on a tray table directly below the mouth of someone eating peanut only 1 filter detected any level, which was 1-2ng/500cm3. They found no detectable peanut levels from 3 air filters tested in a restaurant where individuals were deshelling and eating peanut. Investigators concluded that the risk of exposure to peanut on an airplane stems from potentially contaminated surfaces and not from airborne levels.
a pea sized drop of [peanut] butter was smeared on the skin for 1 minute
no one developed any allergic reactions
I only read the article you linked to, not the actual study. I wonder how they corrected for the extra reluctance a person who believes that he will have an intense reaction specifically to touching peanut butter would have to volunteer for such a study.
Yeah. Some people have allergies strong enough that they’re going to defend themselves by punching the test giver in the nose before allowing contact. I imagine those folks didn’t make it into the study. It would be pretty fun if they did, though.
In my son’s class back in elementary school, parents were asked not to give their kids any food with peanuts because one kid having severe issues.
Not because of air or touch contamination, but because kids might not be aware about everything they are doing, and might share some snack or chocolate bar with the kid without thinking.
They still had to use that allergy pen a few times over the years.
Seems like this is something that should be brought up at the time you buy a ticket so the company can either say, we won’t stock them on the flight or offer her a refund if they can’t accommodate, rather than when the plane has already boarded and expecting the flight crew to deal with it.
Why others should not eat peanuts? In case they wanted to spit on her?
the process of eating is not as straightforward as it seems. while manipulating food and chewing it, you do release tiny microscopic particles of it (especially true for something that has the consistency of peanuts) that end up floating in the air. somebody with high enough sensitivity will be affected, as one single strand of the protein responsible (or a single fragment) can trigger anaphylactic shock
edit: I stand corrected, somebody below has linked some studies done on this and it appears to be more about surface contamination, not air exposure. But then if it’s surface contamination, that would be an issue from the previous passengers on the flight, not the current ones I think?
Ok thanks.
It’s both, but more so for the current passengers. While not thorough, they do clean the planes between flights, about as well as they clean movie theatres between viewings, maybe a bit better.
With previous occupants, the damage is done, nothing can change the fact that they might have contaminated an area that wasn’t properly cleaned, but limiting additional contamination is the only mitigation available for this lady, besides traveling in an N95, wearing gloves and other PPE, which may be a better option than buying up all the offending material.
I can sympathize with her plight, but I understand that not everyone will; and asking people to be cautious of their surface contamination… Well, you might as well ask them to will themselves through the air to their destination unaided by any machine. IMO, most average people don’t understand surface contamination, and by proxy, won’t participate in such restrictions. It’s not something that most people need to, or choose to think about.
I don’t begrudge the person for doing what they did, they have a medical issue that nobody took seriously enough. I get it, but I’m sure more than a few passengers were salty about not being able to get peanuts… No pun in tended.
There’s also the contamination of the flight assistants, someone eating peanuts and having a beverage, contaminates the beverage container with peanut oil, which is collected by the attendant, whose hands are now contaminated, even if they ate no peanuts, who then serves the person with severe allergies, contaminating their food or beverages with the peanut oils, causing them to have a anaphylactic reaction, and potentially die as a result.
Exposure through a chain of contacts is hard to trace sometimes and for the most part, people don’t think about these things. I know that after COVID, I do what I can to touch as little as possible in public places. I don’t want your germs, or the cold, or the flu, or COVID, or anything else the random strangers that previously came through may have had and transferred to whatever I’m touching. No thanks.
Fuck this bitch. Walks up to a plane expecting the planet to accommodate her.
