“Little bitty worms no bigger than a piece of rice was flying everywhere”, reports this reader about the organisms she found at work. “I’m wondering if they may have caused me to get sick.”

The worms our reader found were “under” the “ice cream machine” at her “job”. “It was in nasty, stinking, standing water that has been underneath our building for a while. If you can tell me what they are. I feel sick now.”

No pictures are attached to the submission, so we can already say now that we will not be able to identify these worms with any degree of confidence. There are several worm-like organisms that tend to show up in standing water, such as mosquito larvae and bloodworms, but without photos, or even descriptions of them, we would not be able to confirm if these worms are any of these species.

That said, we will say that it is entirely possible that the presence of these worms in the water could make someone sick, especially if that water is used in the ice cream, or in other items that are being consumed.

We urge our reader to report this to her boss, and if they do not respond to it or care, then she should report to it to “the Occupational Safety and Health Administration” (OSHA), as this is potentially a health and safety violation.

Likewise, if our reader is concerned about her health, and the way in which these organisms may be affecting it, then we advise that she consult her primary care doctor, or better yet, a medical parasitologist.

A medical parasitologist is a physician who specializes in the field of parasites, and really any infection/disease caused by organisms. To find one, our reader can do one or more of the following:

1) Search for a medical parasitologist in her area using this directory of medical parasitology consultants: https://www.astmh.org/for-astmh-members/clinical-consultants-directory.
2) Search for a local parasitologist by doing a Google search for “medical parasitologist (name of the closest big city)” or “tropical medicine specialist (name of the closest big city)”.
3) Get in touch with Dr. Omar Amin at the Parasitology Center at https://www.parasitetesting.com.

In conclusion, we do not know what these worms are that our reader found at work. Nonetheless, this discovery should be taken seriously, and we urge our reader to contact the appropriate authorities. We hope this article helps, and we wish her the very best.