No, you’re not imagining that economy class airline seat sizes have gotten tighter. They certainly have, gradually but quite consistently for more than 25 years now. As passengers, we’re all the proverbial frogs in hot water, and we’re quickly approaching the boiling point.

Tighter seats are more than just a figurative and often physical pain—they’re a threat to your health, and even your life if there’s an emergency evacuation from the plane cabin. In 2018, Congress told the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA),the government agency responsible for the public’s flying safety, to set seat-size minimums that would protect passenger safety.

As part of the process for deciding what minimum seat dimensions should be, the FAA recently solicited public comments on airline seats. Before the comment period ended in early November, the agency received more than 26,000 overwhelmingly negative comments detailing why current airline seats are uncomfortable, pose health risks, and are not conducive to passenger safety. (My organization, American Economic Liberties Project, where I’m a senior fellow for aviation, also submitted comments.)

Now the FAA is evaluating the comments as the next step in setting minimum airline seat sizes. In the meantime, here’s why shrinking airline seats are dangerous to passengers’ health and safety.

Fact: Seats are much smaller today than in previous decades

The Big Four domestic carriers—American, Delta, Southwest, and United—have lost anywhere from 2 inches to 5 inchesin legroom pitch, and 2 inches in seat width since the 1980s. (The average legroom pitch today clocks in at about 31 inches.) On ultra-low-cost carriers such as Spirit Airlines, legroom pitch has decreased even more, dipping as low as a miserable 28 inches.

While those decreasing sizes are certainly uncomfortable, the implications of smaller seats are more alarming than feeling cramped during your flight. No U.S. airlines’ economy seats currently meet the FAA’s own research standards for the amount of room needed for proper bracing, a safety position in which passengers bend their upper torsos and lean their heads against the seat in front of them during an emergency. This in itself should be enough to regulate increases in seat sizes.

Most disturbing of all is how tighter seats impede safe egress during an emergency evacuation. Federal regulations requirea full aircraft to be safely evacuated within 90 seconds, and cramped seating threatens that benchmark. To cite one real-world example, when Delta Air Lines Flight 1086 veered off a runway at New York’s LaGuardia Airport in 2015, evacuation took five minutes rather than 90 seconds—that’s 333 percent longer than the FAA mandate, according to a Department of Transportation report on the incident.

Despite troubling examples like this, the FAA has not actively conducted emergency evacuation testing since the 1990s, and subsequently, an entire generation of new airlines and new aircraft have been certified to lesser standards.

Less room for emergency procedures

As airlines increase fees for checked baggage, it prompts more passengers to bring bigger personal items. Naturally, these carry-ons are stored under the seat and chip away at already too-small legroom. Plus, more under-seat baggage—combined with other factors like ubiquitous charging cords and fuller airline cabins—all further complicate emergency plane evacuations.

Additionally, American fliers today are larger on average as seat dimensions continue to decrease. The result can be a painful experience for many travelers. In fact, according to a CBS News analysis of the FAA comments, more than 200 commenters used the word “torture” to describe flying in today’s economy seats. “The current seats are too small for Americans of average size, myself included,” wrote one commenter, according to CBS. “I worry that this will significantly impact my ability to quickly evacuate the aircraft in case of emergency.”

Lost value for travelers

The airline economy or coach seat has been losing value for decades now. Economy passengers’ dollars don’t stretch as far as they used to when purchasing airfares, as they’re nickeled-and-dimed for space and other benefits. The industry often claims that airfares have fallen over the years, but the products they’re comparing are apples and oranges due to the degradation of seat sizes and many other services that currently incur fees like seat selection and snacks.

Inaccessible seats for travelers with disabilities 

The smaller seat dimensions present specific access problems for 61 million Americans with disabilities: Less space makes it much more difficult to transfer from a wheelchair to an economy seat, for example. Smaller seats also pose medical hazards. They can induce clotting issues such as deep vein thrombosis, which has caused fatalities for airline passengers.

It’s past time to act

As part of the FAA comment period, I recommended that the agency make three major changes in the interest of passenger health and safety:

• Immediately impose a moratorium on the further shrinking of airline seats
• Establish minimum standards of 32 inches inlegroom pitchand 20 inches in width
• Revamp its emergency evacuation testing standards(whichhave not been updated in decades) to reflect the seismic changes occurring in fuller airline cabins

The FAA cannot continue to delay action on such a life-threatening issue; it must issue a new ruling that will protect all air travelers. Additionally, the agency must realize it works for the flying public, not the airlines that would cram us into tighter and more dangerous seating configurations to boost their bottom lines. The agency needs to ignore flawed research and listen to safety and consumer experts, as well as the American public itself: Tight seats are more than just problematic, they’re downright dangerous.