Three red cups with a few ounces of fermented goodness stand in the way of victory. The shot is all in the elbow; line it up and launch. The ping pong ball taps the rim of one cup, rolls across the table and onto the floor where it finds a home under the couch. After a quick blow to remove dust and a dip in water, the game is back on.
Beer pong is one of many classic college games, and The Daily Reveille partnered with the University’s Food Science Department to discover just how dirty those little white balls can become and if their lack of cleanliness can be a hazard to students’ health.
The results of the test show that although beer pong balls may be riddled with bacteria, there are usually not many pathogens on the balls’ surfaces, and a healthy college-aged person should not be concerned with contracting an illness after a night of beer pong fun.
Prior to the test, food science professor Marlene Janes said she believed there would only be a slim chance of a college student becoming sick from playing.
“You’d have to have a high-enough number of bacteria,” she said. “Most young kids who are healthy wouldn’t be severely sick because of this.”
Janes also said if someone were to become sick from playing, the symptoms may be similar to those of a hangover, and the person may not be able to discern a difference.
For the test, a total of four balls were used. The first three balls were subjected to beer pong-like conditions. This included taking a dip in beer followed by bouncing the balls on tables and the ground and exchanging hands. One ball was used inside an apartment, another inside a bar and a third used outside.
These balls were sent to the Food Science Department lab for swabbing to determine how much bacteria each ball collected. The balls were also tested for the pathogens E. coli and salmonella.
A fourth ball was bounced directly onto a sterilized pad swabbed with E. coli. This was done to determine how much bacteria the ball collected if bounced on a contaminated surface.
The last part of the test involved dipping the ball used in the bar into a cup of beer and determining how much bacteria was transferred from ball to beer.
All three balls tested under beer pong conditions had an aerobic plate count higher than 250,000 colony-forming units per ball, which is higher than what is acceptable in a product ready to eat. However, no pathogens were detected on any of the balls, meaning there is almost no chance of getting sick from the bacteria on one of them.
When the balls’ grades of contamination were compared, the indoor ball was found to be the most contaminated, followed by the outdoor ball, with the bar ball being the cleanest — these results could be because of a recently cleaned bar floor or lack of activity on the particular night the ball was tested.
The study also concluded “no transfer of bacteria was observed from the ball to the beer, or if there was a transfer of bacteria, it was controlled by the alcohol content in the beer,” according to the report by Evelyn Gutierrez, research associate with the Department of Food Science.
The ball bounced on the inoculated surface recorded a transfer of 6 percent of bacteria.
According to The Associated Press, Clemson University students recently conducted a similar study where it analyzed ping pong balls used to play a game of beer pong. Its results were different. In games played outdoors, the beer pong balls contained the highest amount of bacteria and in some cases, researchers found dangerous bacteria such as E. coli and salmonella sometimes ends up in the beer.
Gutierrez said although she would not recommend playing beer pong for fear of contracting some sort of illness, the results show it may be fairly safe.
Sports administration junior Matthew Newman said he occasionally plays beer pong, but he rarely thinks of any health risks that may be caused from dirty beer pong balls.
The common practice of dipping beer pong balls in water after they’ve fallen on the ground doesn’t do much to clean them, though that’s not normally at the forefront of most beer pong players’ minds.
“It’s not the cleanest, even though they clean them,” said mechanical engineering junior Blake David about dipping beer pong balls in water.
“Most young kids who are healthy wouldn’t be severely sick because of this.”
-3 balls were submitted to beer pong conditions
-The balls were swabbed for bacteria
-Indoor was the dirtiest, followed by outside and then the bar
-A fourth ball was bounced on a surface contaminated with e. coli and there was a 6 percent transfer of bacteria
-The ball from the bar was submerged in beer and not transfer of bacteria was recorded, but it is possible the alcohol in the beer eliminated any transfer
