John F. Kennedy airport is No. 1 — but not in a good way. A new study by Massachusetts Institute of Technology lists JFK as the most likely airport in the nation when it comes to spreading extremely contagious diseases like SARS or the H1N1 flu virus.
The study, released today by MIT’s Civil and Environmental Engineering Department, looked at how likely the 40 largest U.S. airports are to spread a contagious disease. Surprisingly, airports that handled the most daily flights did not fall highest on the list.
While Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport in Atlanta has the highest frequency of flights, JFK still tops the list in terms of risky disease-spreading factors. JFK is a high risk due to its connectivity to other airports worldwide, and its location in a large metropolitan area, the report found.