"Now eh, that would be approximately ten percent, eh, less than 100 there Normy."
Posted on 02/14/2006 9:08:30 AM PST by Feiny
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, the 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.
I worked at a fast food places when I was a kid in the early 70's and had to clean the fountains every Saturday. Slime and mildew everywhere. But I don't think it is dangerous bacteria. Just un-appealing to know what is in there.........
Who's this ~we~ you speak of? I've never drank bottled water at home in my life. It's nice to be on a well, I hear horror stories about city water supplies.
Good idea to ask for a lemon wedge with your water. OR a touch of clorox on the side...
The filter will take out the Cl2 also. It wouldn't add bacteria though.
You make the basic point. There are bacteria all over everything all the time. The air is full of them. Ponds are full of them. But most are harmless.
Human waste is another matter. It tends to be filled with harmful bacteria. That's why it's OK to fertilize the fields with cow or horse manure, which team with bacteria, but you want to be careful about using human waste.
In places like India and China they do traditionally use human waste to fertilize the fields. But you have to adapt to it, and foreigners are likely to get sick if they eat raw fruit or vegetables for that reason.
So, the question is, what KIND of bacteria? Numbers are less important.
Why did she not use sterile beakers to scoop the ice?
Her controls were poor, and this was an obvious mistake.
"Now eh, that would be approximately ten percent, eh, less than 100 there Normy."
But this kid's experiment fits perfectly with the left and media's wish to take down the evil corporate food empire. How dare you question it.
LOL!
Very true!
Did she use sterile beakers and gloves to scoop the ice from the ice maker?
Not that bad, actually. It depends on the infraction.
The average inspector has several things to look at and the number of questions on the inspection form can vary, too.
They take off for a number of things:
*Is the produce and other ready to eat food stored above any meat product in the refrigerator?
*Are all the incoming products dated properly and stored in a numerical order? (FIFO* first in, first out)
*Does each workstation contain the proper 3 buckets (wash/rinse/sanitizer) & 2 towels for cleaning work surfaces?
There are also several different questions for the set up of restroom and hand-washing facilities along with employee behavior in those areas.
Without asking the restaurant to see a copy of the Health Department's report form, there's really no way to tell if the infractions would result in a direct danger to a customer just by their rating.
It would stand to reason that any food items handled by fast food workers will have fecal matter on it. Hence the occasional outbreaks of hep A or e-coli food poisoning.
You discovered what we used to call "cold water slime"(bacteria). It also was usually all over any cold surface in the ice machine, passages, pipes, etc.
These machines are supposed to be cleaned and flushed out at regular intervals with an appropriate cleaner and almost no one does that. You would have to basically dump the whole ice bin also to get rid of the chemically treated water from flushing and almost no one will do that either.
Brings back fond memories of my refrigeration repair days.
She should of taken samples from the mens bathroom instead. :)
Someone just had to ask....
Actually, the story doesn't make clear if she used sterile beakers to obtain the ice from the machine. If she didn't, this could be a confounding factor. If she did, she has three different samples: one from the toilet, one from the ice machine, and one from the ice machine but using non-sterile cups. She could have then used Analysis of Variance to determine if a statistically significant difference existed between the three types of samples.
Her hypothesis should have been stated: "There is no difference in the number of bacteria from the toilet and from the ice machine." This would be the null hypothesis, and is generally what is tested; her science teacher should have explained the rationale for stating the hypothesis in this manner.
The experiment as a whole was quite sound, especially for a seventh grader. She did something I rarely see in science fairs, that is, she replicated the samples (five of each type). I give it an A.
(Pedantic little squirt, aren't I?)
Sometimes. I wouldn't say usually. In any event, the water could have been blue, but the article didn't mention the color of the water.
That type of ice machine is not that common, IIRC..
( My father used to manufacture and service them..)
You can tell if that type of machine made your ice because you don't get the characteristic "fizz" that you do from the other type of machine, that simply freezes water into cubes or sheets.. ( and, is then often crushed )
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