Flights can be incredibly gruelling and sometimes all you want is just a hot cup of coffee or tea to keep you going.
However, before you reach for the tea bags, flight attendants are urging us all to think twice for a very good reason.
Watch the clip below:
Since flight attendants - who are up in the air all the time - are telling travelers to stay away from drinking hot beverages while flying, then we should definitely listen.
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Flight attendant Kat Kamalani (@katkamalani) shared a TikTok revealing that most airline crew members avoid drinking beverages made with water from the plane.
“Rule number one, never consume any liquid that is not in a can or a bottle,” Kamalani told her one million followers.
But it’s not the tea bags or coffee beans that are the source of the problem, it’s the water.
In 2013, NBC 5 had previously reported that the water used for drinks on flights comes from a tap connected to a water tank rather than from a bottle.
After obtaining the results from a test by the Environmental Protection Agency, the water on commercial airline flights was found to have been tested positive for bacteria.
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Kamalani claimed: “Those water tanks are never cleaned and they are disgusting. So, talk to a flight attendant - we rarely, rarely drink the coffee or tea,” adding that the coffee machines are ‘rarely cleaned’ unless they break.
Kamalani also urged parents not to put the hot water from the plane's water tank into their baby’s bottles.
Instead, she recommended that parents request a bottled water with hot water on the side, pour the bottled water into the baby’s bottle and put the bottle into the cup filled with hot water to warm it up.
Meanwhile, another flight attendant named CiCi (@cici.inthesky) shared the five things she will never do after joining the industry in a TikTok post.
And, you guessed it, number three is drinking coffee and hot liquids that come out of the coffee maker on flights.
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Admitting that she has done so in the past due to ‘desperation’, CiCi said this doesn’t happen often.
A 2019 study by the Hunter College NYC Food Policy Center at the City University of New York and DietDetective.com looked at airline water and its safety.
It found that ‘many airlines have possibly provided passengers with unhealthy water’.
The study analysed and scored 11 major international airlines and 12 United States regional airlines to look at the quality of drinking water and found that seven of the international airlines and almost all of the regional airlines had poor water quality.
Featured Image Credit: @katkamalani/TikTok/Yakobchuk Olena/Getty ImagesTopics: Food and Drink, Travel, TikTok