The next time students team up for a round of beer pong, they should consider the risk involved of germs and diseases spreading between participants, medical experts say.
Playing with ping pong balls that hit the ground as well as cups touched or drank out of by other players can give students more than just a Friday night buzz.
"Your game is a game of sharing alcohol and the bacteria on your hands and mouth," said Michael Leonard, medical director of Health Services at Binghamton University.
Beer pong, also known as Beirut, is a popular drinking game that consists of two teams lining up racks of either six or 10 cups filled with alcohol on opposite sides of a long table and throwing ping pong balls into these cups. If a player sinks a ball into a cup, the opposing team must drink its contents, and the cup is removed. The game is won by whichever team successfully hits all of their opponent's cups first.
The risk of picking up unwanted germs is often introduced when a ball hits the floor or the table surface during a game.
"Most respiratory viruses are transferred by touch," Leonard said. "Everyone touches their face and you bring it into your system."
Teams usually use a water cup to rinse the ball, but according to Leonard, this is not nearly enough to sanitize it. He said that unless the water is boiling, it will do little to destroy the bacteria crawling within it.
In 2006, George Washington University students Aaron Heffner and Ben Morrissey tested cups used in an all-night beer pong game for bacteria. They found that the most concentrated bacteria, including salmonella and E. coli, resided in the water cup used to "clean off" the ball at the start of every turn.
Leonard added that although alcohol has sanitizing properties, players need the degree of alcohol contained in Purell or similar products to kill bacteria. Purell contains about 65 percent ethyl alcohol, whereas beers in the United States typically contain only 4 to 6 percent alcohol by volume.
Leonard also noted that sharing cups while playing beer pong can spread respiratory infections, stomach viruses, strep throat and even herpes.
In 2009, the federal Center for Disease Control debunked a claim linking beer pong with a rise in herpes simplex two virus on American college campuses. But Leonard pointed out that most students who contract the chronic virus, which is characterized by cold sores on the mouth, do not know how they got it.
Some BU students said they understood the risks of playing the popular game.
"When you look in the cup, you see hair and dirt," said Chris Tenore, a senior majoring in integrative neuroscience. "You're playing with random people and don't know if someone has mono. The dirt issue gets overlooked in the spirit of things because everyone's trying to have a good time."
Tenore plays in beer pong tournaments at the Rathskeller Pub in Downtown Binghamton, but uses cups filled with water in the game, drinking only out of his own bottle of beer so as not to take the chance of getting germs from the floor in his cup.
"That floor is sketchy," he said.
"I don't play beer pong because it's gross," said Laquisha Turner, a senior majoring in sociology. "The ball, it falls to the floor. People's hands are touching the ball; the act of putting it in the cup, it's dirty. People might go to the bathroom and not wash their hands."
Other students, however, said they did not see any danger in playing beer pong.
"I don't think you should live your life in fear," said Julian Vives, a senior double-majoring in psychology and Africana studies. "I'm not concerned with germs or catching something. It doesn't matter because it's about fun."
Vives said that when he plays beer pong, there are usually friends of his standing on the sidelines who will catch the ball before it skids off the table so as to minimize contact with dirty surfaces.
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