Wednesday, July 22, 2020

"worms" in South Korean tap water

My buddy Mike once again brings me Korean news I hadn't heard before: South Korea is currently under attack by worm-like critters in its tap water. The beasties appear to be larvae of some sort. Mike originally linked to a Telegraph article about the problem, but that article is hidden behind a paywall, so here's a Korea Herald article instead. Excerpt (edited):

Worm-like creatures that were first found in tap water in Incheon were detected at seven water-purifying facilities across the country, the government confirmed Tuesday, suggesting that water contamination wasn’t limited to just Incheon.

The Ministry of Environment’s three-day inspection[,] which ended Friday[,] found larvae of nonbiting midge[s] and other organisms at seven out of a total of 49 [water-treatment] centers with an [activated-carbon] filtering system.

[There] are two facilities in Incheon and one each in Hwaseong, Gyeonggi Province; Ulsan; and Uiryeong, Gimhae[,] and Yangsan in South Gyeongsang Province, the ministry said. Contaminated filters have been replaced at those sites, along with other emergency sanitation measures, officials said. The sites were also told to conduct maintenance improvements and report the results by Thursday.

On top of the [carbon-filtering] facilities, the ministry has also kicked off an emergency inspection on all 435 regular water-purifying centers in the country starting Friday.

So far, there has been no report of a bug problem, the ministry added.

For what it's worth, I never drink straight tap water. At home, I have a Brita pitcher. Elsewhere, I'm likely to drink bottled water, or filtered water from our office's dispenser. Water used for soup is always boiled. That goes for water in my neti pot, although that's because of a brain-amoeba scare a few years back.


2 comments:

Charles said...

Yep. Read about this the other day. Also heard that they found worms somewhere in Seoul as well, although we haven't seen any critters in our water yet. But we filter all our tap water anyway.

Kevin Kim said...

I meant to write about my own water-consumption habits at the end of the post. I'll tack some remarks on soon.