Last Friday was a huge day in American journalism for stories about the dangers of melting ice. On Friday morning, the journal Science kicked things off by publishing a study which found that the glaciers of southern Greenland are currently losing ice at a much higher rate than they were ten years ago. This, in turn, touched off a flurry of news stories focusing on the potential impact of the disappearing ice (read: people living at sea level, move to Ohio or drown).
But while most of the world’s science writers were focusing on the bad news from Greenland, the producers at CNN were zeroing in on a potentially devastating threat facing another important reservoir of the global ice supply — specifically, the ice at fast food restaurants.
Throughout the weekend, CNN’s Headline News, CNN.com, Anderson Cooper 360 and CNN Live Today reported the startling news that some of the ice, in some of the soda machines, at some fast food restaurants, in some cities, might not be sterile.
“It’s cold, refreshing, and, oh, so good on a hot summer day,” reported CNN. “But did you ever think about what’s in your ice?”
The short answer: bacteria. The long answer: lots of icky things that could make you sick.
As it turns out, CNN’s reports on fast-food ice were based on the findings of a middle-school science fair project. “Of all the projects at the Hillsborough county regional science fair, one project is getting international attention,” reported CNN Headline News (thereby supplying the international attention itself). “A seventh grade student checked five fast food restaurants near the University of South Florida and found there was more bacteria in the restaurant’s ice than there was in the same restaurant’s toilet water.”
More specifically, seventh grader Jasmine Roberts found that at four of the five fast food joints she tested, the ice in self-serve machines harbored more bacteria than the water in the bathroom toilets, while at three of the five eateries the ice from the drive-through window was yuckier than toilet bowl water.
Rather than play up the toilet-water-at-fast-food-restaurants-is-surprisingly-clean angle, Roberts wisely chose to emphasize the comparative dirtiness of the fast-food ice. As a result, she went on to win the science fair.
While that kind of relatively small, relatively insignificant data set is unlikely to get much attention from professional scientists, it was more than enough to get a bunch of professional journalists to fall all over themselves in hopes of an interview. According to a piece in the St. Petersburg Times, Roberts and her school have received phone calls of interest from the likes of Good Morning America, CBS’ Early Show, the New York Post, Canadian Public Radio, Jimmy Kimmel Live and the Tonight Show with Jay Leno.
But to date, CNN’s health and science reporters have managed to outmaneuver the competition from the late-night comedians. At one point on Friday afternoon, their scoop on the breaking dirty-ice story was prominently posted on CNN.com, on equal footing with the report about Greenland’s shrinking glaciers.
Later that night, a crack team of investigative reporters on Anderson Cooper 360 took the story one step further.
“What Jasmine Roberts did was a scientific comparison of the ice used in drinks at a number of local fast food outlets with water from the toilets in those same establishments,” reported Heidi Collins. “By and large, the water from the toilets was actually cleaner.”
“So that got us thinking,” Collins added. “What would we find if we bought ice just like you would on any given day at any given restaurant across the country? … We took our ice samples in Chicago, Dallas, Atlanta, New York, and Los Angeles at a combination of fast food chains and local establishments in each town, a total of 23 samples.”
What did CNN find?
More dirty ice!
“Clearly,” CNN concluded, “there is contaminated ice out there.”
Scary stuff. But if there’s a silver lining in all of this bacteria-laden ice, it is that given enough time, money, and perseverance one of America’s largest news networks can, in fact, duplicate the results of one kid’s middle-school science fair project.
We look forward to more of this sort of reporting from CNN’s health and science reporters — including, we hope, investigative reports on the dangers of eating tinfoil hats, getting bitten by mice in a biology lab, or operating a hovercraft in the privacy of your parents’ home!
Felix Gillette writes about the media for The New York Observer.