Expat Bloggers Agree: Don’t Drink Tap Water in Peru
Tony of HowToPeru has posted a useful survey piece on whether it’s safe to drink the tap water in Peru (Drinking Water in Peru: Safe or Unsound?).
The opinions culled are those of expats (including me) currently living in the country, so while the piece does not cite scientific evidence, it is based on hard-earned personal experience from bloggers in Lima, Cusco, Iquitos, Pucallpa and Chiclayo.
The concensus? With one exception, bloggers agree that the tap water in Peru is unsafe for drinking. Some of us boil the tap water and drink that; others of us only use bottled water. I’m in the latter group.
I’m glad that Tony put together this piece, because there’s little perception — both abroad and internally — of Peru’s abysmally poor water quality, which fails to meet WHO standards. Yes, tourists do need to know that they cannot drink from the faucet. PromPeru doesn’t advertise this fact, and Peruvians make light of the issue, although medical groups that help travelers do categorize Peru’s water as “contaminated.”
For me, it’s the No. 1 thing I dread about having visitors from abroad; about half of my friends who’ve visited Peru have, at some point, mistakenly ingested tap water and been laid up in the bedroom with a day or two of the runs. It has ruined several of their vacations, and I can’t blame them for being mad. Who wants to spend thousands on airfare & lodgings only to spend most of one’s time on the toilet?
But the contaminated water supply affects more than tourists; it is bad for Peruvians. The rich may be able to afford high-quality bottled water, but 80 percent of Peruvians don’t have that luxury. Several million Limeños have no water service at all. Working-class Peruvians are washing their hands and clothes in whatever water they can find — and those hands prepare food in restaurants, change money on the streets, take care of children in people’s houses. Peruvians of all income levels regularly get intestinal parasites — and it takes only a second for that threat to pass from one’s hands to the food supply. That constitutes a public health threat, one that the government does not take seriously.
Even if government officials and upper-class Peruvians don’t care about the health of average Peruvians, don’t they see that it compromises their own as well?
I am not speaking abstractly. Among our friends — most of whom have plenty of money, compared to the average Peruvian — I can name seven people who have told me, over the last three years, that they had to be treated for parasites. (This includes our landlord, a conservative Limeno from a so-called good family.) They weren’t terribly concerned about it — it’s part of living in Peru, they told me. The problem was easy to diagnose; they went to one of the labs you see on street corners (such as Rodelab), paid 20 soles for a test, took the results for a doctor and bought a cheap prescription at a drugstore. Most felt better in a week or two, but some didn’t fare as well.
One Frenchwoman who was teaching at a local high school lost 20 pounds over the course of a month. She kept teaching during that time, and she kept complaining of how tired she was. Finally, she got tested, found out she had worms, took the medicines and spent four months getting better, all while teaching. We were all concerned about her, but the Limeños did not see it as a serious threat; most of them had gone through similar experiences, several times, in their lives. C’est la vie.
I strongly disagree with this perspective, and I refuse to become jaded. It is not acceptable for human beings to contract parasites through their water and food supplies. Pooh on Garcia and his “agua para todos” platform, which might as well be, “a little contaminated water for everyone.” What Peruvians deserve is clean tap water free of e-coli, parasites and heavy metal runoff from the mining operations that pollute the water sources up in the Andes.
Have I been gotten sick from Peru’s water? No. I never drink tap water, I only eat salads at restaurants I know very well, and any time I find myself wondering, ‘Is it safe to eat/drink?’ I don’t touch it. Just to be sure, I do the Rodelab tests every year to make sure I don’t have parasites. Call me paranoid. But so far, knock on wood, my system’s worked. I only wish this country could join the rest of the developed world and make its water safe for everyone.
Barbara
I am an American writer who lived in Lima for seven years (2007-2014), where I covered Andean traditions, melting glaciers and daily life in the capital for Miami Herald, MSNBC and Huffington Post. I now live and work in northern Florida where I champion climate change advocacy and compassionate, affordable eldercare.
9 Comments
Michelle
I agree that the safety of Peruvian tap water is a travesty. The poor families I know who cannot afford to regularly boil water because wood or cooking gas is a huge expense suffer regular bouts of diarrhea and parasites.
Intestinal parasites are nothing to sneeze at. I came down with a case this winter, I was sick for 6 weeks and lost so much weight (I weighed 87 pounds at the worst part of the illness–way too little for my petite 5’3″ frame!). Different kinds of parasites are difficult to diagnose, often not showing up in the first one or two lab tests, and difficult to kill.
I do not drink the tap water, not even to brush my teeth and I have completely stopped eating any non-packaged food that I have not prepared myself. No restaurants, no meals at my extended family’s house, even when traveling I pack my own food and eat it, etc. I live in a northern province and I no longer have any faith in the tap water or the food safety here in Peru.
Barbara
Eighty seven pounds? You must have felt very week. I’m glad that you were able to recover, although it sounds like it was an uphill battle.
I hope that readers will take your comments seriously. I find that until people have experienced these things themselves, they often minimize the dangers. I led a team of reporters thru Lima and the Andes in 2009, and the producer and crew kept calling me paranoid when I insisted that they not drink the water, that they avoid salads. The main reporter listened to me, but the others evidently didn’t. Up in the Andes they got diarrhea, and then it sunk it that I knew what I was talking about.
Emily
I’ve been sick many times throughout the 2 years I lived in Cusco. I used to joke and say I was on the parasite diet! But it’s true that it is a serious issue. I lived in Callao for a few months and the water supply of the neighborhood was cut off from 10 p.m. to 4 a.m every day. This conserved water, but it often seemed like a health risk to me, too.
Ivan
I arrived 10 days ago and used ice cubes to make a mahi-mahi (perico) ceviche. Three days later a got an infection which refuses to abate after a week. And its so painful…
AlexQ
Tap water is treated in Lima, but often the problem lies in delivery system post-treatment. The treatment standards are also not very high, so if there happens to be a high amount of contamination in a treated batch, it may not catch everything, giving microorganisms a chance to fester after treatment. El Comercio had a great little infographic on what happens to one of Lima’s main water sources, El Rio Rimac: http://a.elcomercio.pe/infografia/rio-rimac/index.html. Also some info on water filtration in Lima http://blogs.elcomercio.pe/vidayfuturo/2008/12/sabes-como-se-trata-al-que-se.html.
The key to the successful infection in the gut for most microorganisms is their concentration. We are unlikely to get to get infected if there are only a few microorganisms in the water or food (which there almost always are), thus the longer food or water gets to sit out or get exposed, the more likely it will cause illness. Refrigeration slows down microorg growth, as does freezing, but does not usually eliminate it.
The main bug that you should worry about if you drink or use tap water in Lima is Cryptosporidium http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cryptosporidiosis. It is a parasitic protozoa that is pretty hard to kill or filter. The only treatments that will work on it are osmotic water filtering (which you can buy for about $200 at Sodimac and Home Maestro to install under your sink), boiling (1 min at sea level or 3 min at about 6500 ft), or UV rays (if the water is not murky or filled with large particles). Iodine and chlorine will not kill it usually. It can reside not only in the tap water, but also in juicy ground vegetables. It most commonly gets into water and other food from fecal matter. Washing vegetables will not remove all of the crypto (based on scientific evidence). One study found that about 14% of vegetables at small markets are contaminated with crypto. Others are E. coli strains and sometimes cholera (pretty rare, but outbreaks do occur). You can also get H. pylori from drinking contaminated water in Peru. H. pylori is quite pervasive in Peruvian water and it is estimated that 48% of all Peruvians have H. pylori in their guts.
Basically, the safest thing is to drink only bottled or boiled water unless you shell out for an osmotic filter.
Oscar
I grew up in Peru. Although I did get intestinal worms at least once, I never felt ill from it, and was never treated for it. I have not lived in Peru for 22 years. And my immune system is great. My wife teaches grade 2, and I never get the anny illnesses she brings home. I have also drunk tap water in Mexico and and in Indonesia without any problems. An NPR This American Life episode talked about how one reason people get sick so often and why they have so many allergies is because they have got rid of the many parasites our bodies evolved with. They mentioned that about 90% of the cellls in our bodies are parasitesf some sort. Specifically it tells the story of an allergy sufferer in the US who deliberately got tapeworms, and all his allergies were gone. He was selling tapeworms to other people who wanted them to treat their allergies, until tthe FDA shut him down. My advice, do drink the water. Get used to it, and you will be healthier. I deliberately expose myself a little to things that are considered dirty, and it is extremely rare that I may feel sick. I may be somewhat sick once every 8 years or so, but never bedridden.
Barbara
Oscar — You’re braver than I am. See AlexQ’s comments for thought-provoking data on hard-to-kill parasites that do more harm than good.
Barbara
Ouch, Ivan. I hope that by now (March) you have recovered. Have you?
Barbara
Emily, didn’t know that Callao had water outages. Yes, very bad for the public health. I was thinking of renting a house in La Punta this summer. Didn’t realize that I would have been without water for part of the day.