OK, Judie – I hope you are drinking your Diet Coke from a bottle out at CES! Spotted at Consumerist, a report from ScienceDirect shows that more than 48% of soda fountains contain coliform bacteria. The study was released in the International Journal of Food Microbiology, and you can check out the abstract here.

From the abstract:
First the good news:

none of the ice samples exceeded U.S. drinking water standards

Now the bad news:

coliform bacteria was detected in 48% of the beverages and 20% had a heterotrophic plate count greater than 500 cfu/ml. Statistical analyses revealed no difference in levels of microbial contamination between beverage types or between those dispensed from self-service and personnel-dispensed soda fountains.

More than 11% of the beverages analyzed contained Escherichia 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.

These findings suggest that soda fountain machines may harbor persistent communities of potentially pathogenic microorganisms which may contribute to episodic gastric distress in the general population and could pose a more significant health risk to immunocompromised individuals.

These findings have important public health implications and signal the need for regulations enforcing hygienic practices associated with these beverage dispensers.

While only a single illness outbreak has been associated with soda fountains, it seems fairly clear that vague stomach and intestinal discomfort after dining at places with soda fountains might have a different source than originally thought.

So let’s be careful out there!

Source: Science Direct via Consumerist