12.feb.07
Atlantic City Press (NJ)
Martin DeAngelis
http://www.pressofatlanticcity.com/news/story/7195637p-7050419c.html
LINWOOD — Ian Kimmel, 13, entitled his science fair entry at Linwood's Belhaven School the Fecal Mint Project" to sum up the results of his research into a question that has troubled him for years: Exactly what's in the mints in that bowl on the counter at your favorite local restaurant?
His answer: Put down that spoon.
The story says that the project took him to a dozen or so restaurants around Atlantic County, where he found four places that still use the old system of putting out unwrapped mints in bowls for their customers. All four, he says, were proven in tests by a state-certified laboratory to be contaminated with foul stuff — everything from E. coli to fungus and mold to fecal bacteria.
But Ian isn't naming any restaurants, either in his paper or in an interview, mostly because he thinks that was the fair way to handle what he learned.
His advisers and a New Jersey Laboratories technician told him to use a tissue — “each tissue from the same pack, to get rid of variables,” Ian explains — to gather a few samples, and then to immediately seal his samples in a new Ziploc plastic bag. (Each bag had to come from the same box, for the same reason.)
He brought them home and, using a clean plastic glove per mint, rubbed one mint from each bag in new petri dishes — which the laboratory provided, only it took a family drive to New Brunswick to get them. The dishes had been treated with agar, a culture-growing agent, and he let the samples rest for a week to grow.