According to CNN, the EPA found bacteria in airplane water supplies. So does this truly deserve to become a “everyone get shocked and paranoid” thing?

Coliform bacteria are all over everything. My question is, were the levels higher than some dangerous threshold? They don’t really indicate at all, yet that would be the only important measurement, as I see it.

There are all kinds of bacteria even in ordinary tap water. The same water that you washed your face with this morning. The water that you trusted to be safe. The water that’s sneaking up behind you RIGHT NOW.

See? It’s pretty hard to be scared of tap water. That’s because bacteria are part of what we get for living on this planet. Our bodies are amazingly good at killing most of the bad bacteria and then fighting off the rest. So just because they discovered life in the plane water doesn’t surprise me. It would have been surprising if they somehow didn’t find any.

In fact, I wonder where the airplane water originates in the first place. I bet it’s not some magic sterilized wellspring. It’s probably either some tap, or else it passes through enough containers to pick up some hitchhikers along the way.

Last question: Can the airlines just drop a PUR filter inline with the faucets or something and make this whole terrible problem vanish?