Tests results show a batch of water that Coca-Cola bottled is not responsible for making American soldiers and contractors in Afghanistan sick.
Channel 2 Action News broke the story of the illness back in July. A source on base in Afghanistan sent a couple of the bottles of Kinley water to Channel 2's Aaron Diamant after our first story ran. While Coca-Cola and now the U.S. Army say it's not the source of what made the soldiers and others sick, one expert still has questions.
"You had explosive diarrhea, I mean, it's just debilitating,” said a civilian contractor, who for security reasons did not want to be named.
He described his brutal battle with a severe stomach bug when we spoke with him in July. He, his colleagues and several U.S. soldiers on Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan fought the bug earlier this summer.
“I mean, it was the worst,” he described.
In July, we received pictures of the U.S. Army's signs warning soldiers and others, "Do not drink bottled ‘Kinley' water. It has been placed on medical hold."
Kinley is bottled in Kabul, Afghanistan by Atlanta-based Coca-Cola. After our report the company removed the water from the base and ran tests, which Coke said came back clear.
We learned the Army also sent samples to a lab in Texas. On Friday, in a series of emails, a military leader told us, “All water quality testing has not detected any harmful bacterial or chemical contamination. (Although) trace amounts of mold were identified in the water, (that) is not a health risk."
Dr. Christine Moe, director of Emory University's Center for Global Safe Water, told us the fact the Army found traces of mold means the testing was thorough. Still she called the results puzzling.
“In order to know definitively they would have had to take clinical sample, stool samples, and tested them for a variety of different agents, because the symptoms that the soldiers reported could be caused by any number of different types of germs,” Moe told Diamant.
We're still waiting to hear back from the army about an official diagnosis.
A spokesperson for Coca-Cola said, ‘We have replaced the affected batch of Kinley bottled water and reviewed our manufacturing processes to ensure future products meet the expectations of our consumers."
