What diseases can you catch from a water fountain?

Question:
What diseases can you catch from a water fountain?

Answer:
This is a tricky question because it depends on how you define a “fountain.” The kind you drink from and the kind you sit beside present different risks, although neither is normally very risky.
Many people seem to be nervous about drinking from water fountains, even though it is well known that the municipal water of all major American cities is nearly always carefully monitored for germs and is safe to drink. In most cities, the water that comes out of home taps, park fountains and sidewalk fire hydrants is exactly the same.
Perhaps they have absorbed fears passed on by parents or grandparents who remember the polio epidemics of the 1950s. Americans were terrified of water fountains then — as they were of swimming pools, movie theaters and other spots rumored to be transmission points. Some of those fears made sense. Polio, a gut virus, is shed in feces, and infection comes from swallowing tiny amounts of fecal matter. It is also mostly a disease of children, who don’t always control their bowel movements. So the threat from swimming pools was real, and obvious. With movie theaters, birthday parties or any other place where children gathered, the greatest danger was probably from hard surfaces touched by little hands — the armrests between the seats, the edges of the popcorn counter, the handles of the drinking fountain, and so on.
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For most public drinking water fountains, there is almost no risk of disease from the water itself, and probably not much from the spout. Even if children put their mouths on it momentarily, it is constantly being rinsed. The bowl, however, can have globs of infectious mucus because some people spit before drinking. Some dog owners let their pets drink out of park fountains, which may disgust non-owners, although few germs adapted to dogs are easily transmitted to humans.
The parts most likely to be contaminated are those touched by hands — the rim and the handle. As is true of subway poles, doorknobs, computer keyboards and many other surfaces touched by hands, they can harbor any of dozens of bacteria or viruses transmitted by feces, mucus or coughs.
There are rare exceptions to the assumption that the water itself is safe. According to a recent report on waterborne diseases in drinking water from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, several hundred illnesses and 14 deaths were associated with drinking water in 2011-12. Most of the serious cases were Legionnaire’s disease; the rest were: norovirus, E. coli, Shigella, giardia or other pathogens. None were caused by water from urban water systems given standard disinfection treatment. Most were in camps fed by springs or lakes, or in small communities with wells near broken septic systems. However, in some city buildings, including hotels and even hospitals, the plumbing itself was to blame. City water was run through filters that removed chlorine, but that had themselves become contaminated with bacteria.
In the last decade, Legionnaire’s disease has grown as a threat, even as the overall contamination problem has shrunk. Nonetheless, it is not a typical drinking water fountain problem, because it grows best in warm water, while urban systems have cold-water reservoirs feeding into deep, cold pipes. Also, Legionnaire’s bacteria are not normally infectious when swallowed. They are usually breathed into the lungs, although they can be coughed up and aspirated back into the lungs, a problem more common in old or sick people.
But Legionnaire’s bacteria have grown in decorative fountains. In one famous 2010 case, a “wall of water” feature in the lobby of a hospital in Wisconsin infected eight patients. It was growing in the foam material that was supporting the fountain’s decorative rocks. A study of the outbreak suggested that all hospital fountains be permanently shut down because of the threat to immunocompromised patients.

Source:MSN