Are you a fan of drinking water fountains? If you are, have you ever thought twice before using it? Public drinking water fountains are, after all, provided by your city so they have to be clean, right? But is drinking water fountains safe or not?
Researchers have investigated on how safe they are and they found out that they are actually not.
As Metro State Professor of Biology, Dr. Rebecca Ferrell tested drinking fountains found in three big public venues: The State Capitol, Denver’s main public library, and Denver’s big public bus terminal. She swabbed drinking fountains with sterile sticks then placed on the culturing plates in order to find out if there were any organisms in water fountains that might be able to grow in humans.
So, she found out there were quite harmful organisms present on water fountains.
There are lots of environmental organisms that look pretty disgusting, but actually aren’t going to harm anybody. Those that can cause harm will grow at 37 degrees Centigrade, or 98.6 degrees Fahrenheit. That, of course, is body temperature. That’s why I incubated them at that temperature. I was only interested in things that might be able to grow in a person,” Ferrell said.
According to a recent report on waterborne diseases in drinking water from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, several hundred illnesses and 14 deaths were associated with drinking water in 2011-12.
Folks, a dirty water fountain may not faze you, but if it does, the next time you absolutely must drink from one, if you haven’t got a choice to quench your thirst, we offer this advice from the expert.
The take-home message of this really is let the water run for a couple of seconds, before you drink from it, and you’re going to wash out any loose bacteria that might be down in the nozzle. And then, don’t put your mouth on the parts of the fountain,” Ferrell said.
Most importantly, if you’re helping your child to get a drink at a water fountain, make sure they can get up high enough that they can get into the stream of water, and they’re not putting their hands in the basin and trying to climb up. If they do that, then take them and wash their hands. The basin is usually full of bacteria because they are wet most of the day.
Image Credits: riverkeeper, standrewsgetaways
