In-flight flatulence, or good old-fashioned farting on a plane, is not something that any of us look forward to, whether we’re the perpetrator, the unlucky recipient, or tasked to write an article about the phenomenon. The quiet hush of many plane cabins, and the fear of causing a stench and committing a social faux pas are enough to make anyone cringe at the thought of letting one rip at 30,000 feet (9,150 m). But we all know that sometimes it happens – and, according to one researcher, the urge to pass wind is actually more likely to happen when you’re on a flight.
Air pressure changes to blame
Danish scientist Jacob Rosenberg was taking a flight to New Zealand when he noticed that something strange had happened to his water bottle. The pressurised cabin air had caused the bottle to distort. Rosenberg noted the same effect on his body. “When we landed, my belly had grown. That led me to speculate what had happened. When I got back to work I discussed with two of my students, and we simply came up with the idea for the paper.”
Essentially, when cabin pressure drops, the air in your body can expand by up to 30%. That includes the air inside your bowels – which will seek a route out of the body. Rosenberg’s paper was published back in 2013 in the New Zealand Medical Journal, and, lucky man, he is still being asked to comment on it.
What is a fart?
How does the air get inside your body in the first place? Daily activities cause us to swallow air. This “exogenous” air, including oxygen and nitrogen, needs to escape and can find a route out of the body via flatulence. What’s more, the biome of bacteria in your gut also produces gases and this “endogenous” air includes hydrogen, hydrogen sulphide and methane. Again, it can’t stay inside you forever, building up and up. It needs to find a way out – usually in the form of a fart.
This basic bodily process affects everyone, around 10 times a day at least, and is perfectly natural, as is the increased urge to expel wind when your body is experiencing the pressure changes involved in taking a flight.
Still, the social stigma of passing wind in the wrong place at the wrong time can be excruciating. So is there anything we can do to reduce the chances of that happening?
1. Diet
Certain foods increase our fartiness. As well as limiting your intake of carbonated drinks, avoiding so-called FODMAP foods (fermentable oligosaccharides, disaccharides, monosaccharides, and polyols) can help keep your flatulence to a minimum. These include bread, crackers, cashew nuts, dairy products, certain fruits, garlic, onion, and seeds. Instead, replace these foods with rice, fish and strained fruit.
2. Keep moving
Moving around the cabin can help to relieve gassy discomfort and means it’s not always the same passengers nearby who witness your embarrassment.
3. Filter your pants?
As well as refreshing every five minutes, the air in aircraft cabins is charcoal filtered, which helps to remove odours. You could apply the same method to your underwear. Charcoal filters for underpants are available for purchase. These banana-shaped inserts are meant to sit gently between the buttocks and absorb any odours before they hit the outside world.
And whether you decide to take avoiding action or practice your politest “excuse me”, spare a thought for the poor pilots (and their families). The incidence of flatulence in the pilot population is self-reported at 60% – far more than the average population.
