E. Coli In Spring Water? Don't Freak Out

Sarah Hedgecock-Forbes Staff-6/23/2015

This week, Niagara Bottling, a California-based manufacturer of bottled water, sports drinks and iced tea, issued a voluntary recall of some of its products because of concerns about possible bacterial contamination. The company, whose products include the store-brand bottled water for 7-11, Shoprite and Wegman’s, reports that the spring that provides water to its plants in Hamburg and Allentown, Pennsylvania, showed evidence of E. coli that wasn’t reported by the spring’s operator.

But relax. Bottled water isn’t as scary as it seems — at least compared to other potential sources of contamination.

Water is set to be the world’s best selling soft drink by health conscious consumers concerned about sugar and additives turning their backs on fizzy drinks. (Photo by Matt Cardy/Getty Images)

First off, the recall is pretty limited in scope, only covering spring water bottled June 10-18 at those two facilities — purified water and anything bottled at another facility is unaffected. Furthermore, the company claims that although the bacterium was detected in the source spring, none was found in the water at the actual bottling plant or even, says Niagara, in the water delivered to the plant before it was bottled. Still, the company temporarily shut down the plans, disinfected everything and issued a voluntary recall, predictably, “in an abundance of caution and in the interests of consumer safety.”

But considering the recall notice doesn’t note what kind of E. coli was found, it’s unclear whether it was even a form of the bacteria that’s harmful to humans. (Stan Frompovicz, Niagara’s Pennsylvania supplier, explained after this post was published that he believes the contamination happened in the testing lab. “I got a bad test result. We don’t know how,” he said, explaining that he has had eight years of no contamination and that the tests showed an extremely low overall bacteria count. “If you’re going to tell me that you have a water sample that has E. coli in it and there are no bacteria, something isn’t right.”)

The recall was still a safe move, as some strains of the bacteria are quite dangerous and can cause diarrhea, vomiting and even kidney failure. But according to the CDC, there are six types of pathogenic E. coli — but there are many more varieties that won’t really affect you at all. Some types are generally present in very low levels in the average human gut, and cultivated strains are used all the time in biology research.

Bottled water recalls aren’t tremendously unusual: a quick Nexis search for “bottled water” under lists of food recalls pulls up more than 6,100 results (although search engines aren’t perfect, and some of these results referred to things like Hot Pockets and frozen pizza instead of bottled water). The CDC lists 14 disease outbreaks associated with bottled water between 1971 and 2010; while some instances were traced back to bacteria, others are listed as being caused by cleaning chemicals or an unknown contaminant. For comparison, from 2009 to 2010 the CDC reported 2,231 illnesses related to salmonella in eggs alone.

Searching for water of any kind on the FDA’s list ofrecalls, market withdrawals and safety alerts, however, yields nothing. Presumably that’s because of the FDA’s own guidelines for spreading the word about recalls: “FDA seeks publicity about a recall only when it believes the public needs to be alerted to a serious hazard,” the agency’s FDA 101 page reads. I’ve contacted the FDA for further details.

To prevent foodborne illnesses, use common sense: check with the manufacturer regularly about product recalls, make sure you don’t have any recalled water sitting around in your pantry and report any suspected contamination. You can also save money by drinking water from the tap — just make sure the bottle you’re using is clean.