The 8 Dirtiest Spots on an Airplane, According to Experts

The resurgence of COVID-19 and a certain video involving body fluids that went viral this summer may have many of us reassessing our exposure to germs while on airplanes. Experts say it's a smart idea to mask up when you're on a flight to protect yourself from respiratory viruses like COVID, but what surfaces should have you reaching for the hand sanitizer? A Washington Post reporter recently took a germ-testing device aboard a passenger flight and swabbed several high-touch areas. These are the dirtiest she found, in ascending order from merely gross to a pathogen parade.

In the experiment—which the reporter emphasized was purely unscientific—she found that the toilet flush button contained 35,508 RLU (relative light units), which shows how much adenosine triphosphate (ATP) is present in a swab. The higher that number, the dirtier the surface.

A headrest was found to have 83,112 RLU. In a 2013 episode of the show Bar Rescue, the host swabbed the kitchen of a New Orleans bar and said the RLU reading shouldn't exceed 2,500.

A seat pocket turned up 140,547 RLU. (One caveat about the process: The machine used can't determine whether the residue is from dead or alive microorganisms or from material like sweat, skin cells, or food crumbs. In any case, you'd probably like to avoid touching all of them.)

Swabbing an arm rest found 147,574 RLU.

A belt buckle was a sizable jump up, pathogen-wise, registering 224,320 RLU. "The armrest was kind of indicative, as was the seat belt, because you've maybe got human skin cells," Meikel Brewster, executive vice president of Charm Sciences in Massachusetts, told the Post. "People put their hand on it to raise it up or down, so I would expect that to have some level of ATP."

This surface was found to be "sabotaging any good hand-washing habits," with an RLU reading of 260,013.

A swab of a tray table found 427,147 RLU. "The tray table makes sense, because it's getting a lot more use. People put their hands on it. They put their heads on it when they sleep," said Brewster. "You wouldn't want 400,000 on a surface in a hospital."

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The lavatory sink handle took the unseemly crown as the germiest surface on the plane, registering 657,689 RLU.