The Ice Machine

From the Tampa Tribune:

Benito Middle School student Jasmine Roberts examined the amount of bacteria in ice served at fast food restaurants.

Her project won the science fair at the New Tampa school, and she hopes to win a top prize at the Hillsborough County Regional Science and Engineering Fair, which starts Tuesday.

The 12-year-old compared the ice used in the drinks with the water from toilet bowls in the same restaurants. Jasmine said she found the results startling.

"I thought there might be a little bacteria in the ice, but I never expected it to be this much," she said. "And I never thought the toilet water would be cleaner."

Her discovery: Seventy percent of the time, the ice had more bacteria than the toilet water.

My anecdotal input: Ice machines are hardly ever emptied for cleaning. They can get pretty nasty, and nobody notices it until the health board comes by. The managers of the restaurants say in the story that they clean the ice machines regularly, but there is a difference between cleaning the dispenser and cleaning the ice maker itself. That is probably where the bacteria is coming from.

Toilets, on the other hand, are frequently emptied (flushed) and scoured thorougly. Managers are notified if they are imperfect.

In defense of the restaurants:

Galina Tuninskaya, vice president of Applied Consumer Services, a private lab that tests drinking water, said the standard for drinking water is usually 100 colony-forming units of bacteria per milliliter. The highest amount Jasmine found was 54 units in ice from a self-serve machine.