Is Your Water Cooler Making You sick?

• Posted by tim
• Last updated: Thursday, December 31, 2009
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For years, employers have worried that time and productivity were being lost to ever popular “water cooler gatherings”. ….Now employers have another worry on their hands: Is the water being dispensed from the company’s water machines making their employee’s sick?

It doesn’t  matter whether it’s the bottled water machines, using those large blue bottles, or the more environmentally friendly “filtered” water dispensers…Either way; tests are showing that the water being dispensed from virtually all water appliances (with one notable exception) in offices and businesses contains bacteria levels resembling the water in a fish tank ….

The bacteria problem with the drinking water is being caused by the “reservoirs”….that’s the fancy word for the plastic or stainless steel bucket hidden in the center of all water machines…. Your drinking water sits in this bucket being chilled while waiting for you to dispense it into your cup….since the water contains no chlorine; it has no protection from bacteria…. You’re supposed to clean these “buckets” on a regular basis using a chlorine bleach and water solution to keep them sterile, otherwise the non-chlorinated water sitting in them begins to “grow things”….

BTU International in Billerica MA started looking into alternative water providers that offered filtered units simply with the hopes of getting away from all the hassles associated with the storing, lugging, and lifting of those blue, 42 pound, five gallon water bottles used by their current provider….. During their search, they decided that part of their due diligence should be to investigate and test water purity, both with their current provider and with all new bidders for the contract.

The results of the tests were both surprising and frightening. In the tests conducted by Vitale and Hopcroft, the first sample tested was plain old Billerica tap water…the result: no bacteria (chlorinated). The second test was their current provider; “Poland Spring”….The result: The water tested directly from the bottle: No bacteria…. The same water coming from the dispenser: A bacteria count of over 13,000!

The last two tests were for the two companies vying for the BTU contract: Stonybrook Water and New England Portable Water…. Both were using “filtered” machines and both had their test units in place for about a month…. The results – Stonybrook Water: No Bacteria….New England Portable: 4100.

Conclusions:

1.       Since “Poland Springs” had zero bacteria when the sample was drawn directly from the bottle and a 13,000 count when it was taken from the cooler; the contamination is occurring in the cooler’s reservoir where the un-chlorinated water is sitting stagnant.

2.       Since the “New England Portable” cooler was using Billerica tap water to supply its filtered appliance, and since the Billerica tap water had zero bacteria, it’s bacteria count of 4100 had to be occurring in the reservoir as well since the machine’s filters were removing the chlorine from the town’s water.

3.       The reason New England Portable’s bacteria count was only 4,100 vs. Poland Spring’s 13,000 was that the cooler was only a month old….given a few more months for growth to occur, it would have been equal to Poland Spring.

4.       Since the Stonybrook appliance utilizes “Dry Technology”…..meaning it has no reservoir…The Billerica tap water was going from chlorinated to un-chlorinated and ultra-filtered and into the cup in a half a second…. Consequently; no bacteria….Hence the slogan: “Fresh Squeezed Water”