HUPD Awaits Lab Tests In Contaminated Coke Incident

Officials are awaiting the results of laboratory tests on a contaminated bottle of Diet Coke that made a University employee ill last Thursday, according to Harvard University Police Department (HUPD) spokesperson Peggy A. McNamara.

Tests are being conducted by both the state health department and by Coca-Cola, with results expected by the end of this week.

In the meantime, the machine in Loker Commons where the bottle was purchased has been re-stocked and returned to use after being emptied by HUPD last week so that the quality of the sodas could be checked.

"The school called [Tuesday] to ask when they could go back to selling the product, and I said right away," said Robert Lanz, Coca-Cola's vice-president of public affairs. Lanz said students should not be concerned about the safety of vending machine sodas.

He said this appears to be an isolated incident, and that no other sodas from the Needham plant where the bottle came from have been contaminated.

Lanz said he could not comment on potential causes for the problem with the drink until the test results are released, but that it would be highly unlikely for just one bottle to have been contaminated in the bottling process.

"We bottle 1,000 sodas a minute so affecting one particular bottle would be borderline impossible," said Lanz.

But Lanz said there was no evidence that other bottles had been contaminated.

"We checked additional bottles that were made in the same time frame as that bottle, and we found no evidence of fault in the product...taste, smell or otherwise," said Lanz.

While Lanz said that students should not worry about the safety of sodas purchased from the reopened machine in Loker, he stressed the seriousness with which Coca-Cola has taken this incident.

"We treat our product quality with the utmost care, and this is a very big concern," said Lanz.