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Posted By Nick Broom
It has been suggested by a salesman selling a ‘plumbed in’ drinking water cooler/heater that there have been recent health concerns raised pertaining to the water coolers that are provided with a replaceable bottled water supply. The suggestion was that due to the ingress of air when the bottle is replaced unwanted bacteria may lead to a health problem if the water is not consumed within a short period of time. One well known brand of drinking water does state on its label ‘consume within 3 days of opening’. My first thoughts were that this was a ‘highly spurious’ sales pitch; but I would be grateful for any feedback if you have experienced a similar issue or know of any genuine health issues associated with ‘bottled’ drinking water coolers.
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Posted By Nick House
Although we also use the bottled variety of water cooler, one point that I would also like to add is that most venodrs offer a quarterly sanitisation programme. This is all well and good, but this is a very long time between sanitisations, and the bacteria build up around the taps can be pretty phenomenal.
That said, I have never heard of a confirmation of anyone being taken ill as a direct result of drinking mineral water from such a cooler.
I would however, be interested to hear any comments on this, as now that we are (allegedly) into peak summer, the potential of the bacteria to multiply will be vastly increased, even in air conditioned offices.
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Posted By Robert K Lewis
The problem also is that the delays from ingestion to illness can be up to 72 hours and who would make a link such as this. I always have some slight concerns over bottled supplies particularly when located in full sun.
Bob
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Posted By Geoff Burt
I know of one case (a client) where an infection of some staff was pinpointed to the bottled water supply. They have now changed to plumbed in chillers.
We put the problem down to the algae build up around the area where the bottle slots into the chiller if regular cleaning eg at least every week with a mild disinfectant such as trigene, is not carried out.
And of course if you install plumbed in systems you eliminate the need for manual handling, the dangers of split or leaking bottles, storage space for the bottles, and delivery and collection of bottles.
So all in all is there a choice!
Geoff
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Posted By Nick House
Hi Geoff,
Whilst I agree with your views, the problem that I have is that we are located in office space (15,000 sq/ft divided into 3 separate areas)on a multi tenant site, and there is no provision for 'plumbed in' chillers in our offices.
There is a water supply in the Occ. Health dept next door to one of our office suites, but the quoted cost to extend the plumbing into our 3 office suites (which are linked in paralell running to the right of Occ. Health), was pertty extortionate. Therefore, our MD and FD vetoed the idea straight away.
Therefore, with the legal requirement to provide suitable drinking water, I was left with no option but to use the 'bottled' variety.
Regards,
Nick.
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Posted By Jay Joshi Nick, Any supply of water that remains stagnant has the potential for bacterial growth, including "plumbed" systems. Plumbed potable water systems connected directly to mains are safer from a hygiene point of view compared to ones having intermediate storage tanks , but are subject to the Water bylaws in the context of fittings etc. Obviously, once water bottles are opened, then the water in them can be subject to bacterial growth at optimum temperatures. If you have a regular consumption of water & a cleaning/disinfection regime, then the risk will be minimised. There is a Bottled Water Cooler Association that has a "Code of Practice". More details on their website:- http://www.bwca.org.uk
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Posted By Andy Petrie
An additional problem with bottled water was highlighted at one of my previous companies. We used to recieve our supplies on a monday, and during hot weather, or busy weeks, we used to run out by wednesday or thursday. While this was great news for the coke machine vendors it wasn't to brilliant for all the staff in a hot office.
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Posted By Geoff Burt
Nick (Broom)
Yes I know the problem - how about if you put it as a defrayed cost over say 5 years eg the continuing cost of the bottled water and cleaning regime and increased risk of infection/injury and the inconvenience etc against the initial costs?
Geoff
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Posted By Geoff Burt
Sorry guys - I got my nicks in a twist!
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Posted By Jim Walker
My "other" role in life is as a water treatment specialist. Much purer than drinking water so no axe to grind here.
Without going into a lot of boring detail the plumbed in systems are not all they seem.
Suffice to say I would not drink from one.
This goes for those thingys you buy in Boots etc.
Good old British tap water for me thanks (ensure it is straight from the mains, not via header tank).
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Posted By John Webster
Lets put things into perspective. These bottled water chiller/dispensers have been in extensive use - in the USA - since before the War (WW II that is), as most office skyscrapers were built without piped drinking water (ground level water pressure needs to be 20-30 bar to reach the top of the tall ones, so water is progressively pumped up via many intermediate storage tanks). Even the odd size of the water bottle, 19 litres, makes more sense when you realise it started life as 5 US Gallons.
So if there had been significant health hazards I think we would have heard much more about them by now.
In modern units, the whole of the water circuit is replacable - this should be done at least every 3 months, normally as part of the service contract with the supplier. In these, the tap is not in contact with the water, it flows through a piece of tubing just inside the tap.
Of course, there is no chlorine in bottled water, so nothing to kill off any contamination which might find its way in. But then again, neither are there many nutrients to support bacterial growth.
Tap water does contain a chlorine residual, and is normally clean and wholesome. But in some water supplies, the chlorine can create undesirable compounds from reaction with organic matter. Where the useage is small the chlorine residual will diminish, and there may be a risk of picking up traces of heavy metals, like lead, from solder in the pipework. Piped water dispensers also have a drain connection to the sewers.
So there are possible health risks whichever water one uses, but I would suggest miniscule if correct sanitisation is carried out, and far smaller than not drinking water at all!!.
I would give greater priority to any moving and handling issues, as the bottles can be awkward to lift and invert at the same time. If you decide to go for chillers, also get the rack to place the spare bottle alongside the machine at a reasonable height.
John
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Posted By Jim Walker
As John says, the main reason these drinking water things have become popular (other than the big “con “ that bottled water is purer) is that there are very few non-domestic buildings with a reliable potable water supply, most being from header tanks etc. Check your building and if it has a second floor (or more) it will invariably be header tank water. These are a well-known source of contamination – general muck, dead rats, pigeons etc. Hence the requirement for drinking water taps to be marked, the implication being that those not marked are not suitable.
The “piped supply” drinking systems are designed assuming the water is “mains fed”, in practice, this is very rarely the case. The equipment usually has activated carbon to remove chlorine and deionisation to remove further impurities. The main failure is these cartridges are ver rarely changed at the correct intervals meaning they are effectively passing through untreated water. A worst case scenario is that the cartridges themselves act as a nutrient seedbed and add to the contaminant load. The main reason why I’m so suspicious of these machines the service intervals are time related when in truth time factors are irrelevant the only use indicator is water flow, sterilisation intervals can only be ascertained on an individual basis.
The equipment I design is controlled under a rigorous maintenance schedule (bells & whistles requiring the user change cartridges) also the product water is a few thousand times purer than the water from drinks machine. Nonetheless bacterial and Algae contamination is the bane of this equipment – bang goes the theory of low nutrient levels discouraging contamination.
Water straight from the mains has none of these problems. If you must have a fancy system then the piped one is OK if you have a potable water feed, otherwise it is the bottled version for preference.
As John says it is all relative; The risk from manual handling and dehydration being far greater. I guess it is unlikely the water, even consommé of pigeon, would do any great harm, as the body can deal with all but heavy bacterial loads.
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Posted By Robert K Lewis
As an aside I read somewhere that there are approx 80 different illnesses thet pigeons can impart to humans. Of these I think, in my best recollection, 38 have potential for fatality.
They really are impressive birds! Beats depleted uranium perhaps for the number of kill options open to them.!!!!!!!!!!!!
Bob
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Posted By peter gotch Nick, I had a similar sales pitch. When I asked for a copy of the laboratory report to help me assess what risk was involved in use of bottled water coolers, was told "commercially confidential" ie only for the organisation who commissioned the research. When I asked for a synopsis of the research and its findings everything went very quiet. According to the Internet, research has been done in Boston with bacterial findings at levels above US recommended standards. However, Canadian government reckon that noone has suffered in their country as result of bottled water. But the scare stories have expanded since September 11. See www.anobottlewatercooler.com ........ IMPORTANT NOTE ! Our No Bottle Water Systems are Connected to the Public Water Supply With Our Multi-Stage Premium Commercial Water Filtration System. Are you concerned with Anthrax in your drinking water?. . . Unlike purchased water (private) that is brought into your house or business, the Public Water Supply is heavily secured against terrorists and critical areas are currently protected by the State Police, locks and alarms, and video surveillance. People are worried that a small amount of some chemical or biological agent - a few drops, for instance - could result in significant threats to the health of large numbers of people. That scenario just can't happen. It would take large amounts of contaminants to threaten the safety of a city water system. Because of increased security at water reservoirs and other facilities around the country, and people being extra vigilant as well, it would be very difficult for anyone to introduce the quantities needed to contaminate an entire system. (Note: It would take approximately fourteen (14) eighteen-wheeler trucks to begin to contaminate a reservoir like Quabbin in Massachusetts.) The answer to the question, "Are you concerned with Anthrax in your drinking water?" . . . I don't think you should be!!! . . . However, about (private) water that is purchased and brought into your home or business?? . . . Be Very Careful ! Wow! Let's not drink cans of coke either in case Saddam has injected anthrax into the factory's pipework. In fact probably need to give up eating and drinking if we want to avoid the risk of anthrax. As has already been pointed out our tap water is not always as squeaky clean as it should be whether direct through mains or via header tank. Remember Camelford? Regards, Peter
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Posted By T. Fowler
I work in a hospital in the North of England. Infection control has recently banned the use of such water dispensers because of the risk of contamination at the bottle/cooler interface. At the moment the ban is only enforced in patient areas, where patients might be immune compromised, either as a result of their condition or a consequence of their treatment.
Different hospitals get around this by either cooling their assured cold water supply or providing individual bottles, the latter being very inconvenient and costly.
However, the only argument in non-patient areas has been financial; after the initial cost of say £1k your water bill if much cheaper.
I myself have had 'bad pints' from water coolers on more than one occasion where the taste has warned me off. It is likely that the quality of the water on other occasions, where the taste hasn't been affected, has also been less than ideal.
Tony Fowler
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Posted By Jo Scott Smith
No one has mentioned the manual handling hazards of lifting, turning over and putting a 20Kg bottle of water onto the cooler. As an office of predominantly female staff we have decided to change over to mains fed water coolers for this reason alone.
JO
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Posted By Geoff Burt
By coincidence a client mentioned they had changed over to plumbed in chillers - after doing a costing exercise.
6 months on they reckon the chillers will have paid for themselves within a year of the installation and after that the cost is minimal. Note this does not include repairs but none needed to date.
Out of interest the chillers cost £360 each with free installation if a water supply was within 10m. Maintenance is £40 per annum each.
They were paying £6 per bottle of water and the maintenance costs were higher -it doesn't take too long to recoup the initial costs at that rate.
To restate what was said earlier - extra space gained, elimination of manual handling, elimination of the risk of dropped bottles, the elimination of deliveries - is there really a choice?
Geoff
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Posted By Ian Mycroft
I am very interested by what I have read in this thread. I have been asked to look into this issue by our Internal Audit Department, who are quite rightly concerned about the high cost to the organisation of providing bottled water. I have been asked to look at all aspects and produce a report and recommendation for the way forward. Aspects such as purity of one over the other are a great concern, as are the manual handling and storage space issues. Another issue that has not been mentioned, is the environmental issue of transporting all this water around the country in great big lorries that burn up gallons and gallons of diesel fuel and pump the by products into the atmosphere for everyone to breath in free of charge.
Ian
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Posted By Geoff Burt
Ian
We discussed just that issue yesterday when they were talking about costs. It was mentioned that Greenpeace have it as a priority issue. Apart from fuel, use of roads etc you have all the production costs/resources for the bottled water, and the manufacture and disposal of the plastic bottles - this is all for a product that most people can't tell from tap water.
Geoff
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Posted By Ian Mycroft
Geoff
This is quite true, I have done a small consumer tast around parts of our organisation and the results did confirm that most people could not tell the difference. In fact out of 40 people only one could identify the tap water and prefered the bottled, 3 said they prefered the tap water and the rest couldn't tell the difference, especially if they they are both chilled to the same temperature.
Ian
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Posted By John Webster
Quite right. Forget all the sales bumph, from a purity point of view there is little reason to choose between tap water and bottled water. The minimum legal standards for both are the same. Anybody with the necessary abstraction licence can tap into an underground water source and, subject to meeting those minimum standards, call it by some evocative name that sounds better than tap water. Within reason, they can even claim health benefits from some of the naturally occurring minerals. This could easily be the same aquifer that is being tapped by the local water authority/company!!
There are a few areas in the country, London for example, where the water source is predominantly surface water, and that surface water source receives discharces from towns and cities upstream of the abstraction point. Traces of a number of organic compounds which are not broken down in the treatment process have allegedly been measured in the drinking water. These include metabolites of artificial oestrogen ("the pill") and of diezepam ("vallium"). It is therefore understandable that in these areas some people may prefer to drink bottled water. They should, however, remember that most of the beverages they drink in that area are most probably made from the same tap water!
I believe that most of the public water supplies with high nitrates (mainly East anglia) have been cleaned up by improved agricultural practice and investment in additional treatment stages. This was, in any case, only really a problem for babies not being breastfed.
We should also not forget the fate of that most famous of French bottled waters. A few years ago their source was found to be contaminated with Benzene. A wordwide recall followed (though how much contaminated water had been drunk is anyones guess) at enormous cost - financial and to reputation. I don't think they have ever regained their market share.
The choice is therefore economic and practical, and should take account of manual handling and risks associated with upkeep and maintenance.
Put simply, if you have a ready supply of potable water, use plumbed in, mains fed chillers. If not, then use bottled water chillers.
If both are installed, serviced and sanitised as per suppliers recommendations or industry guidelines, purity & hygiene should not be a significant issue.
John
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Posted By peter gotch
Scottish Water say that they have advised about 140000 people living in the City Centre, West and North of Glasgow that they should not drink the mains water without boiling it as cryptosporidium has been found in Mugdock Reservoir.
I am one of the 140000 (but have yet to hear directly from Scottish Water!)
Arrived at work this morning to find broadcast email to all our Glasgow staff.....
"After discussion, it has been decided that hot drinks will not be provided within Glasgow office until Scottish Water confirm that water standards are back to normal. Staff should not use the water to make tea or coffee."
Now that we have done a proper risk assessment having regard to eg guidance on the Drinking Water Inspectorate website, we have now reinstated use of kettles and advised staff to ensure that all water used for drinks and washing crockery is boiled.
In the meantime it was fortunate that we have the notorious bottled water chillers throughout the office. Otherwise I could imagine staff unrest on an unusually warm day.
Within 24 hours of the media releasing information on our local water problem, our local Safeway Megastore already selling out of sparkling bottled water. Probably out of still my this evening too!!
Peter
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Posted By John Webster
Peter,
A temperature of just 65 deg C will render cryptosporidium oocysts (spores) harmless in 5-10 minutes. Drying will also do the trick - they should not survive on dry crockery and cutlery.
So keep drinking the tea and coffee!!
John
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Posted By peter gotch
John,
Thanks for the comment.
After reading the panic response we sat down and did some research and a risk assessment....
According to the Americans, strategy is to boil water for at least one minute.
The Drinking Water Inspectorate in the UK suggest just bringing the water up to the boil.
Their experts reckon the risk of overheating kettles (and thence fire etc etc) outweigh any potential benefit from longer boiling period.
So we have issued new guidance to staff to use boiled water both for teas/coffees and for washing crockery.
Got back to drinking coffee before lunchtime.
By that time a lot of potentially dangerous bottled water from the chillers had been consumed!
Peter
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