Coffee on a commercial airliner: Poop in the water or worse…

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Coffee, Tea on your next flight? Brushing your teeth after a long flight in the aircrafts bathroom?  Do what your flight attendants don’t do, drinking coffee or tea, or using water in the toilet to brush.

‘There’s poop in the water if there’s E. coli in the water. According to a manager of a lab in Forth Worth, Texas, there’s poop in the water, there may be  E Coli in the water – not very clean .

The claim made in a recent article from Business Insider states that roughly 1 in 8 airplanes fail EPA standards for water safety. The publication reached out to several organizations, including The Association of Flight Attendants-CWS, a union representing more than 42,000 flight attendants across 19 airlines, which said in a statement:

Water onboard is regulated under the Environmental Protection Agency to ensure safe drinking water on the aircraft.  The Association of Flight Attendants-CWA pushed for this regulation over 15 years ago. The regulation gives broad discretion to airlines on how often they must test the water and flush the tanks. AFA does not believe this regulation goes far enough or is sufficiently enforced.”

In other words, it’s not just a rumor. Getting new regulations can be expensive when there is pushback from a powerful force like the airline industry and lawmakers in power who generally oppose such regulations. But it’s hard to believe there wouldn’t be public support for more rigorous water control standards if people knew they are taking a chance when taking a sip on board their flight.

A separate report from the WSJ says that a 2002 test of tap water from 14 separate flights found bacteria levels “tens, sometimes hundreds of times above U.S. government limits.”

None of this means you’ll get sick drinking a cup of coffee or something a little bit stronger on your next flight. But even in  2017, some of the most basic things we take for granted, like clean drinking water, are far from a sure thing. The solution: Bring your own water.

About the author

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Juergen T Steinmetz

Juergen Thomas Steinmetz has continuously worked in the travel and tourism industry since he was a teenager in Germany (1977).
He founded eTurboNews in 1999 as the first online newsletter for the global travel tourism industry.

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