The No.1 occupational hazard: morning breath

It doesn't take long to realize the detrimental effects of frequent flying on our health. Aching backs, sore legs, busted, chafed fingers are but everyday occupational occurences, not to mention rapidly aging skin thanks to the long hours we work in the arid cabin and our screwed up body clock. Nothing, however - and I repeat, nothing - can be more abominable and can take away more years of our lives, than the morning breath that exudes from the mouth of a passenger. Holy, lord.

A typical casualty scenario goes like this: It's 8 hours or so into the flight, and the cabin is absolutely pitch black and some passenger would press that wretched call light. "Yes, may I help you, sir?" I'd bend down, face close to the passenger, and pull up that obligated smile to euphemize an otherwise annoyed question "now what do you want?!" (Oops, did I just say that)

The passenger then stirs sluggishly in his seat, eyes glued shut by eye-boogers and not so much than parting his lazy lips, "cahhhn I have a guh-laaaasss of wahhh-tahhh..."

Before I could remind myself to take precautionary measures of holding my breath after my question, the stench of decayed matters would have already made its way through my nostrils into my already dust-filled lungs. An involuntary gag and compulsion would follow as my body violently responds to the infiltration of lethal gas - but god forbid, this natural instinct to survive must be tactfully suppressed in the face of the sleepy passenger.

"Oh... Oooh... ss...sure... Certainly..." These words would somehow find its way out of my arrested respiratory system while I struggle to regain consciousness. As soon as I stand up and turn around, head spinning from the massacre of brain cells, I'd pretend to cough in the hopes of repelling what must have been a flourescent green vapor that sipped out of that passenger's hole and penetrated into my system. But no matter how hard you try, that atrociously sour stench would linger - if not in your nostrils - in your brain.

This scenario doesn't occur only once, but multiple times during each flight, whether it is at the passenger seat or outside the galley where a passenger with crazy bed-head would request for a coffee (which would only further degrade your breath). And lord, morning breath does travel far -we're talking about several feet here.

So please, I beg, there is a reason why a breath mint and a toothbrush and toothpaste are packed into your little overnight amenity pouch. I really start to believe that it is there for cabin crew sake. When enough passengers don't make good use of these resources, I swear halitosis would one day become our No. 1 killer.