The Massachusetts Institute of Technology paper published this week named JFK at the top followed by airports in Los Angeles, Honolulu, San Francisco, Newark, Chicago (O'Hare) and Washington (Dulles) as top germ hubs.
The team from MIT's Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering looked at the 40 largest American airports to determine what role they may play in spreading contagious diseases, the Medical Daily reported.
With SARS in 2003 or H1N1 making the news in 2009 and currently, a disease can spread rather quickly thanks to how connected airports are.
JFK airport was the airport most likely to play a role in spreading a pandemic.
Not only is JFK a gateway to a large city, New York City, it has connecting flights to every part of the globe.
The researchers evaluated airport location, number of connections as well as waiting times to create the mathematical models that determine how fast a disease could spread in 15 days from the airport.
"Our work is the first to look at the spatial spreading of contagion processes at early times, and to propose a predictor for which 'nodes' -- in this case, airports -- will lead to more aggressive spatial spreading," Ruben Juanes, an energy studies professor, said.
Atlanta's Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport is the busiest airport, in terms of flight frequency, JFK is a major hub connecting New York City to the world and chances are travelers are going to, or coming from, other big hubs and other large cities.
The Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport came in a the eighth spot in regards to spreading infectious diseases.
Los Angeles' LAX Airport was the second most-likely airport to play a role in the growth of a pandemic much for the same reasons as JFK airport.
Surprisingly, Honolulu International Airport was ranked as the third most-likely to spread infectious diseases.
The reason for that, despite having just 30 per cent of JFK's traffic, was due to its prime location in the Pacific Ocean. Honolulu is a major hub to large cities in Asia and can act as a gateway to California.
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