Wednesday, August 1, 2018

I've been served some pretty awfull coffee in my time ...

Many people on Twitter are reporting that a pregnant woman in Alberta ordered a latte at a McDonald's but was served a cup containing cleaning fluid.

According to a report on CBC News, this was caused by the coffee machine still being connected to two cleaning solution supply lines, rather than the milk reservoir.  The cleaning chemical was a mixture of citric acid, phosphoric acid, methyl-trimethyl-3, and 2-butoxyethanol.  There is no doubt that ingestion of this material would be harmful.

It's not clear whether the cup contained hot liquid, though if the machine were set to deliver coffee, but connected to a cleaning chemical supply, it's likely that the cup did feel normal, and since it was a takeaway, it would have been fitted with a lid, so gave no indication that it didn't contain latte.

This potentially very dangerous incident gives a lesson:  if you are a pilot, a car driver, or the operator of a food processing machine, the principles are pretty much the same - the pre-start checks must always be conducted before any start and done properly.

2 comments:

Tim Brooks said...

As we discussed in person:

The engineering solution to this (given the pressure on workers in this industry) would be to have cleaning solution feed tubes trip a switch on the machine that would essentially identify the connected substance

The machine could be programmed with safeties preventing it making drinks while connected to cleaning solution. Similarly, the machine may not perform a cleaning cycle when not connected to cleaner (to prevent an improper clean cycle leading to other food safety hazards)

sonda said...

Nice post. I learn something more challenging on different blogs everyday. Thanks for sharing.

Post a Comment

Comments on this blog are welcome, as are questions and suggestions for further articles. Comments are moderated to reduce the incidence of spam. If your comment includes a link to a commercial site, it will normally be rejected. If you have sent a "Thank you" comment, please don't be offended if it is not published - I appreciate your message.