Which Is Cleaner?

today on abc's "good morning america" they featured a 12 year old whose science project was to find out if the toilet water at fast food restaurants was cleaner than the ice that came out of the fountain drink machine. she tested five restaurants in florida taking samples from the toilets, the ice dispenser behind the counter, and the dispenser that customers could access. she found that seven out of 10 machines dispensed ice cubes that were more contaminated than the water in the toilets. the ice contained more ecoli bacteria than the toilets!

a scientist from a well know university was on the show with the 12 year old girl to help explain some of the results and explain what this means to americans. he said though the results are disturbing they are nothing new. the only difference is now we know about the problem and can start to take actions to correct the it. he said that the problem is caused by the handling of the ice with unclean hands or improperly cleaned machines, and if you haven't become sick from drinking or eating the ice to this point that you shouldn't be afraid of getting sick from it in the future.

this news is a bit disturbing to me because when i'm eating at a public restaurant i generally order water with lemons and after i drink the water i eat the ice. now that i know about the ice being contaminated will i stop getting ice in my beverage or stop eating the ice? probably not, like the scientist said, if i haven't gotten sick to this point i shouldn't worry about getting sick in the future. heck, we've been doing it so long that we more than likely have developed an immunity to a lot of the bacteria that it contains. how many of you are going to stop ordering your drinks with ice?