Fecal Bacteria Found On Almost Half Of Soda Fountains 9
Do you think soda tastes best from a fountain? A team of microbiologists from Hollins University have found that extra flavor might just be coliform, a fecal bacteria. 48% of the sodas they tested from soda fountains had the bacteria. Even better news, the study also found that most of the bacteria were resistant to antibiotics. From the abstract: "...Coliform bacteria was detected in 48% of the beverages and 20% had a heterotrophic plate count greater than 500 cfu/ml. [...] More than 11% of the beverages analyzed contained Escherichia coli [E. Coli] and over 17% contained Chryseobacterium meningosepticum. Other opportunistic pathogenic microorganisms isolated from the beverages included species of Klebsiella, Staphylococcus, Stenotrophomonas, Candida, and Serratia. Most of the identified bacteria showed resistance to one or more of the 11 antibiotics tested."
So there's bacteria everywhere (Score:1)
As TFA says, "Lawasky made sure to note that there has been only one recorded outbreak linked to soda fountains, and that was 10 years ago."
News at 11
To quote the Myth Busters ... (Score:2)
To quote the Myth Busters ... "there's poo everywhere".
Seriously, ewww. :-P
Cheers
Soda does taste best from a fountain. (Score:2)
I can think of a few reasons:
The exception is that most 'convenience store fountain soda' tastes like the cleaning fluid used to clean the machines.
Re: (Score:2)
It's too bad, because convenience store fountain soda is usually cheaper and available in larger quantities.
And there's part of the reason.
What the hell kind of summary is that? (Score:2)
a) the bacteria has nothing to do with the taste.
b) everybody who drinks soda drinks fountain sodas and problems are not wide-spread (though plausibly acute).
c) we don't clean soda fountains with antibiotics, we use bleach and other destructive cleaners. Antibiotic resistance reflects the general population of bacteria, nothing to do with soda fountains specifically.
Re: (Score:2)
> What the hell kind of summary is that?
The usual kind. This is Slashdot, after all.
Death by Misinformation (Score:2)
There is so much FUD in this article... or at least in the summary. I don't want to click-thru, because I don't want to give any hits to yet another OMG GERMS article.
News flash: you *want* E. Coli, unless you 3 diarrhea, dehydration, and death. It's everywhere, because we need it. The "bad" E. Coli is largely engineered by humans -- not on purpose, but by feeding antibiotics to our factory-farmed food animals, feeding antibiotics to ourselves, and by meticulously cleaning every possible surface. The ant
Re: (Score:1)
This is a good point. I had a college internship at a small zoo. There were several things we did to help reduce the chance of kids getting sick from E. coli at the petting zoo. We kept the grounds cleaned, kept the dust down, provided hand sanitizer at the exits, we wouldn't allow kids/adults to enter with food or gum, and a few other standard practices.
The most interesting thing we did was feed the animals a supplement that contained bacteria like Lactobacillus. They said it contained other natural ru
immune wars (Score:1)
the article doesn't mention what concentrations the bacteria are found in because they are not in concentrations enough to do any harm to anyone but folks with limited to non-existent immune systems (of the boy in the plastic bubble type that is) who aren't going to be just running down to the Sev for a Big Gulp anyway. We live in a world of germs, our immune systems don't work if we aren't exposed to them regularly. If your immune system has nothing to attack, it will, just hanging out with all the rest of