Maybe the dogs knew best all along.
Could drinking out of the toilet really be safer than eating ice at your local restaurant?
That's what Jasmine Roberts found to be true.
The seventh-grader at Benito Middle School in New Tampa, Fla. went to five different fast food restaurants for a school science project and found more bacteria in the ice than in the same restaurants' toilets.
Roberts' findings have created national attention, including questions and concerns from University of Memphis students.
"That's disgusting. I chew on ice (and) now I know I'd be better off dipping a cup in the bathroom," said Emily James, a film major.
Daniel Lim, a microbiology professor at The U of M, said he isn't surprised by Roberts' discovery since bathrooms are cleaned daily and not many people clean their ice machines.
"If you don't clean the receptacle the material is in routinely, there may be a possibility of bio-film or residual material remaining in that receptacle," Lim said.
Jim Griffith, president of Suncoast Ice Machines, leases and services ice dispensers and also wonders about the cleanliness of area ice machines.
"How old is that ice and where had it been all that time? Was it manual fill or was it dispensed? We weekly clean all of our machines. That's what everyone should do," Griffith said.
But U of M students shouldn't worry about getting filmy ice, said Bill Curgh, an employee at the Tiger Den.
"We take out all the ice left in the machine at the end of the week and clean the receptacle," Curgh said.
That's a relief to James.
"It's good to know that The University does take time to clean where most people wouldn't even think to clean," she said. "But from now on I'm asking restaurants when the last time they cleaned their machine."
Freshman David Cox said Roberts' experiment should raise the standards in restaurant cleanliness.
"I don't understand why this wasn't part of the health test in the first place," Cox said. "Why does a seventh-grader have to raise attention to this in a science fair? Shouldn't this be something that was found before now?"
