Hacker News Reader

Comment by dehrmann | Hacker News Reader

Airplane air is way cleaner than you think: https://www.ana.co.jp/group/en/about-us/air-circulation.html

No amount of marketing nor "science" is going to change my mind: Aircraft cabin air is /motherfucking/ foul.

You don't need to be an aerodynamics engineer to understand this either: Take a deep breath inside a usual aircraft cabin and tell me if that air is fresh and clean. If you do, either you are fucking lying out your ass or you never tasted truly clean, fresh air in your life.

There is a difference between fresh air and clean air.

And I argue aircraft cabin air is neither fresh nor clean.

Ok, but research indicates that air circulation thru HEPA filters on planes is actually pretty good and this results in the air being thoroughly cleaned. So while certainly not fresh the evidence seems to indicate clean.

Do you often talk with this much hostility?

Yeah.

Life's short, I'm well past the point of caring about people's fee fees regarding something we'll all forget about tomorrow.

So I'll say my piece and bug out. Don't like it? Don't read it; don't care.

Life's short, so you have decided to make it as unpleasant as you can while here. It's a strategy.

I gotta be honest, I enjoy having friends like this. It's refreshing, honest and radical. I dont mind the tone, not sure why. I commonly disagree vehemently with them.

Unfortunately though, most of my friends will never meet eachother, to preserve world peace.

I’ve noticed that people who claim not to care what other people think are paradoxically desperate to make sure everyone knows they don’t care.

You might have a point hidden behind the hostility, but it's not very convincing when you scare-quote the word science and claim that no amount of contradicting data would make you change your mind.

Is anything that comes in the form of an academic paper bullshit in your mind, or just the ones about plane air quality?

If anyone can scientifically demonstrate that aircraft cabin air is clean, sure I'm open to changing my mind. And no, not the air measured as it gets filtered; I'm talking about the air as it enters our noses while in the presence of several hundred tightly packed people with little elbow room.

Practically speaking, anyone who has ever been inside an aircraft cabin can speak all day about that distinctive "aircraft smell": A cocktail of smells that reminds one of industrial petroleum products, aged metal and plastics, human sweat and other biological waste products, dust, and tired cloth, among many other unpleasant things.

Noone is ever going to convince me that air that smells like /that/ is "clean", regardless how many layers of HEPA it's been through.

>If anyone can scientifically demonstrate that aircraft cabin air is clean, sure I'm open to changing my mind.

And

>Noone is ever going to convince me that air that smells like /that/ is "clean"

Seem to be at odds with each other. But, for what it's worth, I agree that there is a distinctive "aircraft smell" whenever I've flown, and I'm not particularly keen on breathing it in either.

It's not contradictory; if anyone can scientifically demonstrate that air which smells foul is in fact clean, perhaps in defiance of natural instincts, I would have to concede it's clean because facts are facts.

Thing is, I haven't seen anything from anyone to that effect other than the "air is cycled through HEPA" canned PR response which is hardly convincing.

If there are scientific papers which note the contents of aircraft cabin air and compares it to objective definitions of clean air, coming to the conclusion the aircraft cabin air is clean, I'm interested and maybe they can change my mind.

HEPA filters only remove particulates. VOCs (organic compounds) are reaponsible for the smells and these require more expensive carbon filters at the very least...

> No amount of marketing nor "science" is going to change my mind: Aircraft cabin air is /motherfucking/ foul.

I would trust the science, but not an ad from an airliner (which the linked page is).

Reply on news.ycombinator.com