Something In The Water: Packaged Ice

Feeling a little down as a result of the state's involvement in your love life? Chewing on ice as a way to alleviate your sexual frustration? Well, stop! That crap is poisonous! Do you even know what's in packaged ice? Unfortunately, we just found out.

People often worry about rancid food or contaminated beverages, but what about the other things we consume? If bad food and drink can make you sick, can't bad ice as well? The Food and Drug Administration doesn't seem to think so. Despite the fact that studies show that packaged and manufactured ice chips are about as clean as toilet water, the FDA does not regulate packaged ice producers or the ice made at food retailers. That's right, the ice in your Big Gulp has never been inspected and is not held to any standard.

So what, it's just a little bit of ice, right? That's not how the Beeman family of Phoenix, Arizona feel. In 2002 their son died after drinking beverages chilled in a public cooler. The cause was filthy ice, which infected him and 80 other youngsters. Noroviruses, like the one that killed Scott Beeman, are rarely fatal, but they can (and should) be easily avoided. Maybe this wouldn't happen if the FDA had a standard for the production and handling of ice? No, that's too much to ask.

If the United States government is so worried about the health and well-being of its citizenship then why allow contaminated ice on the market? It's almost as though they are too busy regulating our private lives to notice that some of these companies are getting away with murder. Does it sound like we are suggesting that there's a discrepancy between how corporations and citizens are expected to operate? Because we totally are.