ok, this is disgusting

[nickel]

Student finds toilet water cleaner than ice at fast food restaurants

New Tampa, Florida - 12-year-old Jasmine Roberts is a seventh-grade student at Benito Middle School in New Tampa.

When it came time for her to choose a science project, she wondered about the ice in fast food restaurants.

Jasmine Roberts, 7th-grade student:
"My hypothesis was that the fast food restaurants’ ice would contain more bacteria that the fast food restaurants’ toilet water."

So Roberts set out to test her hypothesis, selecting five fast food restaurants, within a ten-mile radius of the University of South Florida.

Roberts says at each restaurant she flushed the toilet once, then used sterile gloves to gather samples.

Jasmine Roberts:
"Using the sterile beaker I scooped up some water and closed the lid."

Roberts also collected ice from soda fountains inside the five fast food restaurants. She also asked for cups of ice at the same restaurant's drive thru windows.

She tested the samples at a lab at the Moffitt Cancer Center where she volunteers with a USF professor. Roberts says the results did not surprise her.

Jasmine Roberts:
"I found that 70-percent of the time, the ice from the fast food restaurant's contain more bacteria than the fast food restaurant's toilet water."

Roberts' graph shows the toilet water, shown in red, had less bacteria in most cases than the ice inside shown in blue, and the ice from drive-through windows shown in green. Roberts' teacher says he wasn't surprised either.

Mark Danish, Honors Science Teacher:
"It does concern me and I think with any restaurant you have to think twice about what you may get there."

Roberts says she'll think twice before getting ice at fast food restaurants again.

Her project won the science fair at Benito Middle School, and she hopes to win the top prize at the Hillsborough County Regional Science and Engineering Fair, which starts Tuesday at the USF Sun Dome.
http://www.tampabays10.com/news/news.aspx?storyid=25442

[CornMonkey]

ugh.........

[MikeD]

I'll throw in the token :puke:

[Markel]

There are really a number of explanations for this. How often does the ice machine get "flushed", disinfected, injected with blue germ killer, etc.?

One other thing - the girl never told us what kind of bacteria. I think I'd take my chances on the ice-machine variety.

[InfiniteNothing]

To be fair, you wouldn't want disinfectant in your ice water.

[Grimm]

Bacteria gives your immune system exercise. Without it it gets weak and unable to fight off serious disease.

[nickel]

Bacteria gives your immune system exercise. Without it it gets weak and unable to fight off serious disease.
that is true, and actually while i thought it sounded disgusting that there was more bacteria in the ice than in the just flushed toliet water i also thought meh, we'll survive it. how many other sources of dirt do we ingest during the day?

it's like the thinking of my physician assistant friend who let his baby suck on a rock at a cookout we were at last summer. when everyone's eyes bugged out looking at the incident he said he was promoting a healthy immune system.

[bachviet]

No mo ICE!

[ArkiStan]

This may sound dorky and paranoid, but I truly believe we've come to a time when so-called "bacteria" and "dirt" are the last things we should be worried about. There was a time when bacteria and unsanitary conditions posed a serious risk on the human race. Nowadays there exist much more harmful elements that we are exposed to everyday. Such elements include various household carcinogens or chemicals in pesticide/preservatives/foods, just to name a few. The scary thing is many of these elements we tend to take for granted, sometimes even accept as an obvious part of our everyday lives.

There was a time when we walked around in streets of mud and dung. Although the life expectancy was shorter, people died of much more natural causes back then.

[InfiniteNothing]

that is true, and actually while i thought it sounded disgusting that there was more bacteria in the ice than in the just flushed toliet water i also thought meh, we'll survive it. how many other sources of dirt do we ingest during the day?

it's like the thinking of my physician assistant friend who let his baby suck on a rock at a cookout we were at last summer. when everyone's eyes bugged out looking at the incident he said he was promoting a healthy immune system.

Sounds bad for teeth.

[nickel]

Sounds bad for teeth.
not if you don't have any. :P