Unsafe drinking water on planes

[Bubbette]

Friday's Wall Street Journal had a long article on how the water from the tap on many US domestic (I think they tested one European airline) airlines had impermissibly high levels of bacteria and in one case, insect eggs!

Oops, I see another ppruner posted it here:
http://www.pprune.org/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=71511

[320DRIVER]

Although my outfit tests the water according to the current Ground Handling guidleines in the the AHM, we still have pictograms in the lavatories in the lavatories to state that the tap water should not be used for drinking/brushing etc. if only to avoid frivolous suits from SLF getting the runs etc.

[Lou Scannon]

If you want to see someone screw their face up- try asking one of the ground engineers if they ever drink "aircraft" water. They get to see the insides of the tanks and pipework!

[Mac the Knife]

Reasonably clean - sure. Potable - don't be silly.
That's what the water-cooler with the paper cups is there for.

Would any sensible person anywhere drink the tap-water in a train loo?
No? Then why should you expect anything different on an aircraft?

All the makings of another absurd SHOCK! HORROR! story.

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I tighten lose women...

[Rollingthunder]

I always have large whiskys and carry my own one litre bottle of the other water.

[Lu Zuckerman]

For a long time the US Dept. of Transportation had a restriction against taking on water (trains and planes) in Pascagoula, Mississippi. This water was so bad that the first time I went into the company loo to take a wiz I thought there had been several other guys ahead of me that had neglected to flush the john. I flushed the john and the color of the water did not change. Most restaurants and homes had filtration systems installed to bring the water to a consumable state.

:rolleyes:

[McGinty]

See my comments about food surfaces and possible flight crew illnesses on this thread

http://www.pprune.org/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=71511

[Blacksheep]

Aw come on Mac the Knife, where do yo think the water in the water cooler comes from? There's only one water source on an aeroplane and Lou Scannon is right, you wouldn't drink any of it if you could see inside the works...

BTW, the guy who drives the water cart and tops up the water is often the same man who drives the honeycart. Its generally good advice never to shake hands with a man who has green fingernails :D

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Through difficulties to the cinema

[Notso Fantastic]

Mac, there is no separate water supply to the coolers! It's exactly the same as goes into all the sinks. I don't know how the loos work - is any fresh water pumped in or is it just recirculating? Perhaps it' better not to talk about it!

[Lucifer]

BA have recently installed an anti-bacterial lining to all water tanks to prevent infection.

[Jet II]

Lucifer

I think someones pulling your leg - BA has the same water tanks as everyone else.

All airlines regularly (or should) disinfect the aircraft water system, however there are doubts as to the effectiveness of this.

And Lou Scannon is quite correct - I never drink the water.

NSF on aircraft with vacuum lavs the flush water is the same as out of the taps - on aircraft with independant tanks the water is just recycled.

[Spitoon]

For as long as I can remember if I ask for water on an aircraf it has come out of a bottle (Evian etc.).

Don't know where the water for the coffee comes from though - I would presume that it gets boiled and is therefore safe (even if it tastes disgusting). Don't think I'd risk money by betting on it though!

[Mac the Knife]

I stand corrected. Sort of assumed the drinking water would be separate. If not then normal regs should apply.

Example quote from "Potable Water Regulations for Common Carriers" (Canada in this instance).

"potable water" means water that is free of pathogenic bacteria and is of such a composition that, when five 10-millilitre portions thereof are examined according to the standard procedure outlined in the latest edition of Standard Methods for the Examination of Water and Sewage, published by the American Public Health Association, not more than one portion thereof shows the presence of organisms of the coliform group, that is to say, the most probable number is not greater than 2.2 per 100 millilitres; (eau potable)

"potable water system" means the equipment used on a conveyance for handling, treating, storing and distributing potable water; (système d'eau potable)

"raw water" means water that is not potable water; (eau brute)

Agree with PaperTiger that somewhat higher levels are not usually a problem for normal people, nevertheless once you start accepting less than internationally agreed norms for potable water you're on a slippery slope. Something that John Snow realised in 1854 when he quelled an outbreak of gastroenteritis by taking the handle off the (contaminated) Broad Street public pump (he later went on to pioneer anesthetics). Presume you wouldn't accept out of regs JP1.

Next time I'll bring my own.....

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I tighten lose women

[Ex Servant]

When I flew down the back we were always told to drink bottled water only but always gave the pax water out of the tank as we never had enough to go around. Same water goes through the boilers I believe (except ATR's and similar that have carry on urns rather than tanks).
Only heard of a problem once within the co's I worked for. One of the aircraft went to its manufacturer for maintenance but was due to go straight back on line on return. As a favour the manufacturer filled up the water tank and toilet fluid tank before it was returned. Unfortunately someone got them the wrong way round! It wasn't noticed until my colleagues started the tea and coffee service. Using the modern brewers the crew can't see the water as it goes into the pots. Heard on the grapevine the tank had to be flushed through four times. Crews said the aircraft smelt like a hospital for a couple of weeks afterwards. Atleast it covered up the smell of the toilets on a long flight I suppose!
Hygenic pax is a nice idea but including it as part of the service is maybe more than they bargained for!

[BlueEagle]

If their is only one source of water on aircraft why do some aircraft have a separate port for filling up what is marked as 'Potable Water"?

Or is that just to distinguish between what goes in the water tanks for the galley and wash basins and what goes into the toilet flushing system?

[Cayman]

This has got out of hand, it is on almost every airline site. Another SHOCK HORROR story, thought you lotr were against that ?

What........Captain accepts foul water from ??? Accepts it is 'normal'.

Rubbish...I know that BA do regular checks on all potable water, I would guess that most other majors do the same. Water is from the local tap and the same as served in the local hotel. Aircraft tanks are also checked.

I would not say potable is better than bottled but it should be the same as household water from a stored tank.

C

[luchtzak]

Hi all,

please don't drink potable water in the aircraft! That's a first hint I can give! I know that in my company they put anti-disinfectant tablets in the potable-watercontainer. Causing the water to have a chloride-smell. The coffee/thee you're getting is usually heated up to approx. 90 degrees so it isn't boiling.

If you really don't need your coffee in the morning you shouldn't drink any but on the other hand: you have gotta die of something :-)

greetings!

luchtzak
http://www.luchtzak.be

[unwiseowl]

Tap water? Yes, but from taps all over the world. Then it sits in the tanks, often getting warm and horrible stuff grows in the tank. I don't like green slime in my tea!

[PAXboy]

With long haul, what temperature do they heat the potable storage tank to, to stop it freezing? Will that temp help to restrict growth of wriggling things? Short haul may have more of a problem?

I only drink bottled water on flights. I do not drink the tea because the lack of boiling makes poor tea. Fortunately, brandy is a disinfectant ... ;)

[McGinty]

The Canadian regulations say the following:

"Every [airline] employer shall provide employees with potable water for drinking, personal washing and food preparation that, where reasonably practicable, meets the standards set out in the publication entitled Guidelines for Canadian Drinking Water Quality, 1978, as amended in March 1990 and published under the authority of the Minister of National Health and Welfare."

See
http://www.tc.gc.ca/actsregs/clc-cct/aoshr.html#COU40H.KENORP.IDYVFE.D3

Employers may comply with the regulation by telling flight crew to drink bottled water rather than water from the aircraft's tanks, but note that the regulation also dictates that potable water must be provided for hand-washing. Do the airlines that tell flight crew to drink bottled water also tell them to wash their hands in bottled water as well?

If airliner water is as contaminated as the Wall Street Journal article suggests it is, then what are the consequences of washing one's hands in this water? Sure the soap gets rid of bacteria, but then when you rinse the soap off your hands with that contaminated water and then accidentally lick your finger 2 minutes later, what are the risks?

[SeldomFixit]

Blue Eagle - "modern" large aircraft have several, connected tanks that hold "potable water". The term has become more or less, generic. When you flush the lav, approximately 8 fl ozs of this " potable water" is rinsed into the bowl to further lubricate the teflon coating on the bowl and assist with the removal of...enough said. When you press the dispensing button on a water cooler, galley faucet, lavatory sink tap, this same water, under pressure from either the aircraft pneumatic system or a seperate compressor, is delivered from that very same storage tank. Whether it be boiled, or wrapped in a paper wrap bearing an inscription declaring it to have been " sanitised for my protection", the answer will be, no thank you. Almost every large outfit will have an inhouse schedule for disinfecting service equipment etc but you would be best to assume that it is rarely, if ever done whole heartedly or correctly. Those same larger carriers would also have a policy that the guy filling the potable water is not to be involved in toilet servicing on the same shift, Again, it may be prudent to say, " uh huh" to that one as well.
In the early 80's I remember wondering what the marks were on the inside of an " Air Scare" Classic lavatory bowl. All was revealed when at a later time I saw a steward breaking up the ice cubes that had refrozen into a solid lump, using an ice pick ( yes, once upon a time aircraft carried those ). I have NEVER had ice in a drink on an aircraft since that day. I kid you not. Stick to the bottled stuff, I do.

[Mac the Knife]

Very hard to believe these alarmist tales (I can't read the WSJ article). I'm not a hygiene fanatic but surely there are strict government regs and company SOPs (at least for the majors) as regards potable water sourcing and storage as well as regular checks on tanks etc. Lets hear it from the CMO of a big carrier (and from the horse's mouth with no urban legends).

My bro' was a ship's doctor on the cruise liners for many a year and water storage and bacterial count was checked religiously. Small example - CDC does random inspections of liners entering US ports - http://www.cdc.gov/nceh/vsp/scores/legend.htm and bites hard. One of the first duties of the day was to read the graphs for the water chlorinators and deepfreezes to make sure everything was tickey-boo. Regular testing - one bug over the limit and you had to superchlorinate the erring tank (not popular with the passengers at all). Daily kitchen and dry/cold storage inspections with a big signed logbook and much much more. [Also shortarm inspection of crew, but we won't go into that...]. I know that an airlines isn't a cruise-liner BTW but all the same.

Finally standard city tapwater in the 1st World (and SA) is cleaner and subject to stricter control than any bottled water. Not that I drink it me'self d'ye see? (at least not without Jamieson's).
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I tighten lose women

[MidnightSpecial]

Continental Express in Newark got me sick on one flight. All I had was a soda and ice.

On subsequent flights (I was deadheading on them a lot) I saw the food service truck that they used. They had a large bucket that the service guy used to scoop the ice cubes out of and into a smaller container for the plane. There was no cover on this bucket and the guy got his hands on the ice as he was rooting around in there to break up the ice.

Yuuck.

MS

[McGinty]

Since not many people are able to read the original article, I post below the actual scientific results as reported:

We took samples of airline water from 14 flights and sent them to a prominent lab to test bacteria levels. We collected samples not only from lavatory taps but also from the galley. The reason: Though most airlines insist they serve only bottled water, flight attendant unions told us they use galley water when bottled runs out. In all but two of the cases, bacteria levels exceeded the maximum level the federal government allows in municipal drinking water -- 500 colonies per milliliter. Below, the bacteria counts and some of the prevalent bacteria on each flight:

Flight/Airline: Boston-Logan to New York-La Guardia/U.S. Airways
Galley (cfu/mL): 12
Lavatory (cfu/mL): 119,000
Comments: We thought water on short hops might have higher bacteria levels, because less is used and it may sit in the tanks longer. But the galley water was fine. (U.S. Airways questioned our methodology.)

Flight/Airline: Chicago-Midway to Los Angeles/American Trans Air
Galley (cfu/mL): 2,400,000
Lavatory (cfu/mL): 1,600,000
Comments: Both samples showed Pseudomonas aeruginosa -- a hardy bacterium we found on a number of flights. It's known to cause infections of the respiratory and urinary tracts. The airline declined to comment.

Flight/Airline: Chicago-Midway to Newark, N.J./ Continental Airlines
Galley (cfu/mL): 1,000,000
Lavatory (cfu/mL): 2,700,000
Comments: Our lab told us that such high counts could mask smaller quantities of potentially more harmful organisms. Indeed, in this case, it wasn't until our lab's second round of tests that it turned up Citrobacter, a coliform. Continental called our test "unscientific."

Flight/Airline: Chicago-O'Hare to Mexico City/Mexicana Airlines
Galley (cfu/mL): 750
Lavatory (cfu/mL): 51,000
Comments: The galley water here was relatively clean. And like most airlines, Mexicana says it uses that water only for coffee and tea -- which require boiling. Their biggest concern? How we got into the galley.

Flight/Airline: Hartford, Conn. to Chicago-O'Hare/United Airlines
Galley (cfu/mL): 310,000
Lavatory (cfu/mL): 45,000
Comments: Our flight attendants wouldn't give us the water, so we had to get it ourselves -- and we found the galley sample had more bacteria than the one from the lavatory.

Flight/Airline: Jacksonville, Fla. to Atlanta-Hartsfield/ Delta Airlines
Galley (cfu/mL): 160,000
Lavatory (cfu/mL): 350,000
Comments: Though Delta says it has a rigorous water-testing program, we found high bacteria levels in both samples. The lavatory sample contained something called Acinetobacter junii-genospecies 5, which our lab says has been associated with sewage.

Flight/Airline: London-Heathrow to New York-JFK/British Airways
Galley (cfu/mL): 200,000
Lavatory (cfu/mL): 120,000
Comments: Many flight attendants told us airlines serve tap when they run out of bottled. Sure enough, our attendant admitted he was serving tap from his pitcher. It tasted funny. (The airline says it has "comprehensive systems" to ensure safe water.)

Flight/Airline: Los Angeles to Chicago-Midway/American Trans Air
Galley (cfu/mL): 430,000
Lavatory (cfu/mL): 700,000
Comments: The same germ (Sphingomonas echinoides) turned up in both the galley and lavatory samples, suggesting that the problem was in the airplane's tank, not in surface contamination, as some airlines suggested.

Flight/Airline: Los Angeles to Sydney/United Airlines
Galley (cfu/mL): 7,900
Lavatory (cfu/mL): 770
Comments: Not only did this flight have cups in the bathroom, when we asked the flight attendant what she was serving, she grimaced and said "tap." Concentrations were among the lowest in our survey, though still higher than the EPA's maximum level.

Flight/Airline: Mexico City to Chicago-O'Hare/United Airlines
Galley (cfu/mL): 11,000
Lavatory (cfu/mL): 7,400
Comments: Read with caution: Both tap and galley water contained eggs of aquatic insects that grew into maggots. "I've never seen it in all the 26 years I have been testing water," says our lab's director. United says its water is clean and the contamination must have come from taps or surface areas.

Flight/Airline: Moline, Ill. to St. Louis, Mo./American Airlines
Galley (cfu/mL): 440,000
Lavatory (cfu/mL): 5,000,000
Comments: The counts couldn't have been more different from a similarly short flight, our Boston-New York trip. To the airline's credit, the attendant was reluctant to give us tap; even that, the airline says, violated its policies.

Flight/Airline: Newark, N.J. to San Francisco/Continental Airlines
Galley (cfu/mL): N/A
Lavatory (cfu/mL): 20,000
Comments: Our attendants served only bottled and wouldn't give us tap -- even when we went back to the galley to ask. On this flight and a few others, we also tested the coffee: It came out with fewer than one colony of bacteria per milliliter.

Flight/Airline: New York-JFK to Las Vegas/National Airlines
Galley (cfu/mL): 4,100,000
Lavatory (cfu/mL): 7,000,000
Comments: The lavatory water contained the coliform Citrobacter, which is found in feces and can cause intestinal problems. National responds: "Someone with dirty hands must have used that sink."

Flight/Airline: Portland, Ore. to Minneapolis/Northwest Airlines
Galley (cfu/mL): 1
Lavatory (cfu/mL): 8,000,000
Comments: Our most baffling result, with galley water doing the best and lavatory the worst. Our lab compared the 8 million count to what you'd find in tainted raw hamburger. "Out of sight," said the lab director. Northwest says it follows EPA procedures.

Note: Samples analyzed by Hoosier Microbiological Laboratories following the lab's standards. While in a few cases shipping time may have prevented analysis within the recommended 30 hours, the lab says the extra time would produce negligible difference in colony counts and high counts are not necessarily consistent with longer shipping times.

[Phil McCavity]

Bacteriologists .. care to observe/ interpret the above results? Some of the bacterial counts are multiples of the federal limits of 500 colonies/ml!!!

[penguin]

HOW SAFE IS AIRLINE WATER? BRING YOUR OWN BOTTLE!
November 1, 2002
Wall Street Journal
Nancy Keates and Jane Costello
http://online.wsj.com/public/article_print/0,,SB1036110025940498271,00.html

According to this story, when Juanita Green needed to take some medication on a flight to Los Angeles, she washed down the pill with a cup of water from the plane's bathroom sink. It tasted funny, but she tried not to think about it. "For peace of mind," says the nurse from Miraloma, Calif. "I just hope it's clean and sterilized."
The story reports on bacteria counts and lab analysis from our 14-flight survey.
For years, fliers have worried about everything from stuffy cabin air to bad meals. But what about the water? While airlines insist it's safe to drink, some little-noticed studies from Japan to the Netherlands have turned up some unfriendly bacteria in the tank water, including E. coli and the germ that causes Legionnaire's disease. U.S. researchers have tested it, too, with mixed results that suggest you don't know what you're drinking. The story says that in this study, they packed sample vials and took to the
skies, hopping on 14 different flights everywhere from Atlanta to Sydney, Australia. On each, we collected water from the galley and lavatory taps, sealed them up and sent them to a lab for analysis. The results of the water-quality snapshot: a long list of microscopic life you don't want to drink, from Salmonella and Staphylococcus to tiny insect eggs. Worse, the story says that contamination was the rule, not the exception: Almost all of
the bacteria levels were tens, sometimes hundreds, of times above U.S. government limits. Donald Hendrickson, the director of Hoosier Microbiology Laboratories in Muncie, Ind., which tested the samples, was quoted as saying, "This water is not potable by any means."
The good news, of course, is that this water isn't the main drinking supply for passengers, who usually get bottled H2O from the beverage carts. But plenty of people depend on the plane's taps to wash their hands and brush their teeth. And while the airlines say they rarely serve tap water, many flight attendants say it isn't that uncommon: When the bottled water runs out, they turn to the tanks -- which, under federal regulations, are
supposed to provide drinkable water.
Sara Dela Cruz, a spokeswoman for the union of United Airlines attendants, was quoted as saying, "It's the way our service works."
For their part, the airlines say they closely follow federal guidelines for drinking water, and say no passengers have ever complained about getting sick from it. "It's absolutely drinkable," says a United spokesman. They called our water tests unscientific, and said our own samplers could have contaminated the results. "Someone with dirty hands must have used that sink," said a spokesman from National Airlines, where the lavatory sample came back positive for coliform. But the authors say their experts said human contamination wouldn't explain all our results. Some of the water collected on a short flight to St. Louis, for example, contained Pasteurella pneumotropica, a bacterium primarily carried by rodents. Similarly, the Chicago-to-Los Angeles trip turned up Pseudomonas, a highly resistant bacterium associated with a range of infections. And while the U.S. government sets a maximum bacterial level of 500 "colony-forming units" per milliliter for municipal drinking water, our lab counted more than four million per milliliter in a single sample
alone. That's roughly the same bacterial concentration you find in a tainted raw hamburger, Dr. Hendrickson says.
Abigail Salyers, outgoing president of the American Society for Microbiology and a professor at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, was quoted as saying, "If I were the airline, I would worry about what these results say about the sanitation in their galleys."
This isn't the first time, of course, that airline cabins have raised a
health issue. Travelers have worried about everything from the quality of recirculated air to the potentially fatal blood clots associated with "economy-class syndrome." But airlines' tank water may fly beneath the radar, health experts say, because travelers wouldn't think of linking it to any bugs they might pick up.
Arthur Forni, an infectious-diseases physician at Westchester Medical Group in New York, was quoted as saying, "People blame it on where they've been." Still, at least some people try to avoid it -- including a number of flight attendants.
The story says that Zach Bjornson-Hooper, a home-schooled 13-year-old from Alamo, Calif., who became curious about airline tap water when he saw a flight attendant pouring it for passengers, stating, "My parents own a sailboat, and I know we don't drink the tank water on that." So as part of a science project, he took samples during a trip to Australia and New Zealand
-- and watched later as colonies grew on his petri dishes. "I got fairly grossed out," he says.
In our tests, we thought the length of the flight, or the country in which it originated, might affect the results. It didn't. While our lab turned up 750 colonies per milliliter during a Chicago-Mexico City flight, we found millions of colonies on that short hop to St. Louis. Among our other findings: Salmonella, a well-known bacterium that can cause violent illness,
on a Continental flight to Newark, N.J. Then there were the eggs: On a United flight, our lab found aquatic insect eggs that, after a few days, hatched into maggots. "I've never seen it in all the 26 years I have been testing water," Dr. Hendrickson says.
To be sure, much of the bacteria we found aren't harmful -- one that showed up in many samples is commonly found in soil. Even the most unfriendly bacteria don't necessarily cause illness either. And foolproof testing isn't possible: As airlines pointed out, our samples weren't taken under sterilized conditions onboard. "It's unscientific," said a spokesman for Continental, who said the Salmonella could have come from a customer's hands. The Air Transport Association, which represents the industry, says our methods were "not consistent with scientific protocols."
But the microbiologists we talked to said the results are valid -- we followed guidelines recommended by our lab and recognized by the Environmental Protection Agency. What's more, other studies have turned up similar results. In 1999, the Japanese government found excessive bacteria levels in one-third of 65 planes it tested at Narita Airport outside Tokyo. The following year, KLM Royal Dutch Airlines found traces of the bacteria that causes Legionnaire's disease in one jet. And last January, E. coli was found on the aircraft used by Canadian Prime Minister Jean Chretien. (The Canadian Department of National Defense says no one became sick.)
The story says that the U.S. Food and Drug Administration is responsible for the quality of airports' water facilities, like hoses and hydrants. The Federal Aviation Administration is also involved, requiring airlines to clean and flush their onboard tanks (the schedule can vary, but is usually done every 12 to 14 months, the FAA says). And once the water's onboard, it falls under the regulation of the EPA, which requires airlines to clean tanks quarterly and confirm their water complies with federal standards. But the agencies say they leave most of the monitoring to the airlines. The EPA says spot-checks are rare because airplane water is "not a priority"
compared to all the other water systems the agency tracks, says Bill Diamond, the director of the agency's Drinking Water Protection division. The FDA, meanwhile, says it's never found problems with the water in airline tanks, and holds inspections only when complaints come up. Still, the FDA has issued six warning letters since 1997 that might disturb some fliers: It
found a "dead mosquito-type insect" in an AirTran Airways potable water cart, and cited Northwest for not maintaining "clean and sanitary potable water stations" at its storage system in Detroit. It also warned American Eagle, American's commuter branch, for not having a splash-back valve on a hydrant that supplied drinking and chemically treated lavatory water. (Airlines say all of the violations have been resolved.)

[QuackDriver]

Just remember not to ask for ice in your drink/glass for the disinfectant (CH3CH3OH of choice) - rather defeats the object.

[cwatters]

It would be interesting to see test results for the water quality before it's put into planes.

[King Kee]

Have you seen the state of some of the water bowsers, even in 'modern, sophisticated' UK, let alone some third world countries. Was carrying out an audit at a certain airfield somewhere in the middle of the UK recently. Won't mention the handling agent. Rustbucket of a water bowser leaking all over the tarmac, and dread to think what the tanks looked like inside.

What do I drink on aircraft.....beer. At least from a can you know where it's been!

[CD]

Originally posted by McGinty:
The Canadian regulations say the following...

From an aviation perspective, here is a link to a Transport Canada, Aviation OHS Commercial & Business Aviation Advisory Circular addressing potable water on board Canadian aircraft:

Air Operators' Responsibilities With Respect To Potable Water Systems On Board Aircraft (http://www.tc.gc.ca/CivilAviation/commerce/circulars/AC0208.htm)

[McGinty]

Thanks for the link CD

Note that the date of the report is about 4 months after the discovery of polluted water that was noted as follows by the Wall Street Journal -- "And last January, E. coli was found on the aircraft used by Canadian Prime Minister Jean Chretien".

No doubt he initiated the kick in the bum that resulted in the Canadian potable water advisory.

I now note that the US Association of Flight Attendants has posted the body of the WSJ article on its web site. When you combine that text with the report of the scientific analysis provided in a previous posting on this thread, then you have the entire original article. The link is

http://www.flightattendant-afa.org/how_safe_is_airline_water_110202.asp