‘Shut My Mouth So Hard’

A video capturing a woman’s anxiety on a plane after she ate a Snickers bar just before an in-flight announcement about a passenger with a severe nut allergy has gone viral on TikTok.

Elise Bay’s (@iamelsiebay) clip has garnered 3.9 million views and over 3,000 comments since being posted on May 18.

“Nobody on this plane knows how close we are to a disaster,” reads a message overlaid on the video, which shows a woman seated on a plane wearing headphones who appears to be on the verge of panicking.

Another note across the video reads, “I just had a Snickers bar,” as an announcement in the background says, “On board this flight, we have a passenger who is severely allergic to nuts. We therefore ask you not to consume any nuts or open products containing nuts which you may have brought on board.”

According to another note across the screen, the woman then realizes, “I can’t open my mouth…yet.” A caption shared with the post says, “I shut my mouth so hard the next hour.”

As alarmed as the woman may have seemed, doctors say her fears were largely unfounded.

Dr. Martin Smith, a double board-certified allergist and immunologist at The Cleveland Clinic in Ohio, told Newsweek: “There is very minimal risk to the peanut allergic passenger. Another passenger eating a Snickers bar, or even a peanut butter sandwich, poses no significant risk to the other passenger.”

Dr. Purvi Parikh, an allergist and immunologist with the Allergy & Asthma Network, agreed, telling Newsweek: “This is not a huge risk in the sense that a nut allergy has very little airborne transmission. It is more by contact.”

According to the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), peanut allergies are among the two types of allergies that cause the greatest concern for passengers on commercial aircraft, with the other being sensitivities to animal allergens.

However, allergic reactions during commercial air travel are uncommon, “occurring at an incidence approximately 10 to 100 times lower than that reported for accidental allergic reactions to food occurring in the community,” according to a July 2023 study in The Journal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology.

“Despite increasing passenger numbers and food allergy prevalence, the rate of allergic IMEs [in-flight medical events] has not changed over the past three decades,” the study said.

The FAA advises: “If you or your child has an allergy to peanuts, contact your allergist/physician before your trip to discuss travel-related risks and ask if you should carry medications with you.”

Asked whether it was necessary for the woman in the viral clip to keep her mouth closed throughout the flight, Smith told Newsweek: “Absolutely not. Chewing with her mouth open or closed makes no difference in the risk posed to the other passenger.”

He further clarified, “There is a myth perpetuated about something called ‘airborne peanut allergy,’ and this simply does not exist. Studies have proven that peanut dust or aromas from peanut butter cannot elicit anaphylactic reactions [life-threatening reactions to allergic substances, such as swelling, a drop in blood pressure] in a peanut-allergic person.”

Smith noted that the only “mild risk” on a plane may be the surface contamination of tray tables, seat belt buckles, or door handles. If a peanut-allergic person were to touch these contaminated surfaces, “they may experience localized skin irritation and a hive or two, but not anaphylaxis,” he said.

Parikh told Newsweek that the woman didn’t need to close her mouth but should have washed her hands and disinfected/wiped down the surfaces she touched, such as the tray table/seat, and “that is sufficient.”

“If she was in close contact with the allergic patient, intimate contact with her mouth could have been dangerous, such as kissing or hugging without brushing her teeth/washing her mouth. But that is unlikely here as she did not know the passenger.”

Asked if the situation could have been catastrophic if the woman had kept her mouth open, Parikh said, “No. Airborne transfer is very low for nut allergies, luckily. It is more through touch/contact, so washing hands, tray tables, and mouth is sufficient.”

There could have been an issue if “the person with the allergy shook hands with this individual or accidentally touched the wrapper or the wrapper touched a surface like a tray table of the nut allergic passenger,” Parikh said.

Smith advised: “The takeaway message here is that a person with even the most severe form of peanut allergy has to physically ingest a peanut-containing food by mouth to have an anaphylactic or fatal reaction.”

Newsweek reached out to the original poster for comment via TikTok. This video has not been independently verified.

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