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Editor's note: This excerpt first appeared in photographer and author Harold Davis' recent Focal Press book, Photographing Flowers: Exploring Macro Photography with Harold Davis.
The closer you...
Traditional book reviews don't make a whole lot of sense in the era of
Internet. After all, instead of reading my second-hand account, you can sample
and/or order Jet Smart by exploring
Healthy Flying with Diana Fairechild.
Despite a feeling of superfluity, I'm going to try to set forth my favorite
parts of this book.
This particular MIT nerd had a tough time absorbing all of the New Age lessons
in Jet Smart. Fairechild recommends flower essences for balancing
emotions, talks about "our bodies having invisible rivers in which energy flows
through us," and suggests practicing telepathy (maybe if I knew what professors
were thinking, I could
finish my PhD). Even if I'm
not able/ready/whatever to adopt Fairechild's philosophy, I have to admit that it
seems to have worked for her in 21 years and 10 million miles as an international
flight attendant. She writes as though she never lost her love for flying and
wonder at the mysteries of the Earth spread out below. Fairechild is positively
poetic when writing about the sky.
The portion of Jet Smart that answered more of my questions than
any other is on jet-smog. "Jet-smog is what I'm calling the peculiar
inflight environment--high in, pesticides, and pollution while low in oxygen,
pressure, and humidity." She cites a JAMA study confirming her experience that
passengers contract colds from each other: "Severe infections are almost
inevitable sequelae to interncontinental air travel presumably from prolonged
recirculation of mixed viruses from 450 people in a confined area."
I never knew that airlines reward pilots with bonuses when they save $80/hour
of fuel by cutting off passenger fresh air. Some airlines even have policies
preventing pilots from turning on all the fresh air packs until a passenger
complains.
In the subsection "To Pee or Not to Pee," Fairechild reveals that inflight
cabin air is dryer than any of the world's deserts, i.e., less than 10% relative
humidity and sometimes as low as 1% whereas the Sahara clocks in at 25% relative
humidity. What can you do about this? Fairechild has a raft of practical tips,
including advising 8 to 16 ounces of water per hour of flight, but notes that
airline beverage carts do not contain much decent bottled water and that
carbonated beverages seem to compound jetlag. Furthermore, she reveals the
disturbing truth that my tastebuds long suspected: "there are no standards for
commercial aircraft water tanks."
Jet Smart is reasonably well-researched. Instead of leaving us
wondering why this deplorable state of affairs persists, Fairechild explains that
airlines don't like to buy the humidification equipment from Boeing: "to sustain
a relative humidity of 35%, a 747 will need to weigh 2200 pounds more on takeoff
-- translating into about fifteen passengers left at the gate."
Frequent intercontinental flyers will find an hour with the 182 narrow pages
of Jet Smart a worthwhile investment. Even occasional flyers owe it
to themselves to read
Is Airplane Air Really Unhealthy and Germ-Filled.
