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Air rage and oxygen
27 April 2005
Maybe air rage isn't your fault.
We've all read the stories about airline passengers who go ballistic over some petty or imagined slight, or those who get way too drunk for the amount of alcohol consumed, then become loud and obnoxious.
Maybe it's not because they're just jerks: maybe it's because they're short of oxygen.
A recent study suggests Air Travel Starves us of Oxygen and that this is a cause of illness for many passengers.
Myself (and without any research to back it up), I think it may also be the reason for air rage. Reduce the oxygen to your brain and you reduce your ability to think clearly, to use the frontal lobes as effectively and you revert back to that old reptilian-adrenalin-powered brain stem. People become aggressive, angry, their responses easily triggered. They start to act like they're behind the wheel of an SUV.
This is clearly the problem with SUVs: the cabs must be airtight. SUV drivers quickly use up all the oxygen and become stupid. They career all over the road, they're pushy, obnoxious and they gab on their cell phones. Those symptoms are a lot like air rage, don't you think? The parallel seems clear to me.
Maybe we need to provide extra oxygen for airline passengers and SUV drivers, to reduce the number of incidents of rage. Since there is no longer any smoking allowed on airplanes it wouldn't be as much of a fire risk (smoking, by the way, also reduces oxygen to the brain by as much as 15 per cent so smokers are doubly stupid in an SUV...).
Maybe if we pumped oxygen into the cabs of SUVs, we might even return their instinctual human sense of respect and consideration for others that is apparently lost when they get behind the wheel of their lumbering behemoth. And who knows, it may even make them so smart they don't get fooled again by the advertising and buy another gas guzzler when they shop for a vehicle next time!
We've all read the stories about airline passengers who go ballistic over some petty or imagined slight, or those who get way too drunk for the amount of alcohol consumed, then become loud and obnoxious.
Maybe it's not because they're just jerks: maybe it's because they're short of oxygen.
A recent study suggests Air Travel Starves us of Oxygen and that this is a cause of illness for many passengers.
Quote
"...54 per cent of all passengers lose four per cent of oxygen at maximum altitude. That's a level many hospital doctors would treat with extra oxygen.
Myself (and without any research to back it up), I think it may also be the reason for air rage. Reduce the oxygen to your brain and you reduce your ability to think clearly, to use the frontal lobes as effectively and you revert back to that old reptilian-adrenalin-powered brain stem. People become aggressive, angry, their responses easily triggered. They start to act like they're behind the wheel of an SUV.
This is clearly the problem with SUVs: the cabs must be airtight. SUV drivers quickly use up all the oxygen and become stupid. They career all over the road, they're pushy, obnoxious and they gab on their cell phones. Those symptoms are a lot like air rage, don't you think? The parallel seems clear to me.
Maybe we need to provide extra oxygen for airline passengers and SUV drivers, to reduce the number of incidents of rage. Since there is no longer any smoking allowed on airplanes it wouldn't be as much of a fire risk (smoking, by the way, also reduces oxygen to the brain by as much as 15 per cent so smokers are doubly stupid in an SUV...).
Maybe if we pumped oxygen into the cabs of SUVs, we might even return their instinctual human sense of respect and consideration for others that is apparently lost when they get behind the wheel of their lumbering behemoth. And who knows, it may even make them so smart they don't get fooled again by the advertising and buy another gas guzzler when they shop for a vehicle next time!
