The red worms our reader has been finding in his toilet are earthworms, not intestinal parasites. That being said, if our reader is truly worried about his health, he needs to address those concerns with a medical professional who is licensed to give medical advice!

We recently received a question through the All About Worms Facebook page about “two red worms in the toilet bowl.” The worms were “10 cm long, thin, like one millimeter in diameter, and alive, even in the water, they were still moving.” The reader didn’t actually ask for an identification, but instead asked if the worms might be parasites. This is his main concern, and we will focus on this question, although the answer is of course tied to what exactly the reader found, so we’ll touch on the matter of identification as well. What might the red worm in the toilet be, and are they parasitic?

On two recent occasions in the last week, a reader found a worm in her toilet. She found the worm after she used and flushed the toilet in both instances. The worm in the toilet is quite small – it is only about a half an inch long (about 1.5 centimeters) – and it has a white and grey body. (It isn’t really either color, so the worm is more of a whitish, grayish color, with both end tips of the worm being a darker, almost black color.) Understandably, the reader was worried about finding a worm in her toilet, so she went to the doctor to be tested for parasites. She was given Albenza by the doctor as she awaited her test results. In the meantime, she asked us to weigh in the matter, hoping that we can identify the small worm in the toilet she found.