QUESTION:
Was Dasani bottled water recalled due to parasite?
ANSWER:
No, this is an old rumor that has resurfaced again.
SOURCES:
Coca-Cola, Food and Drug Administration, University of Maryland Professor of Entomology: Michael Raupp, Central Florida Aquarium Society
PROCESS:
A creepy story spreading about parasites popping up in water bottles is freaking people out online, including one of our Verify viewer from Damascus that reached out to the Verify team.
Our researchers traced the rumor to its source and found out this isn't the first time it's made the round on social media.
The website "News KTLA” first shared the story back in 2016. When we took a closer look at the site it's a lot of fear based headlines but not a lot of facts. Even though the article had no real evidence about the recall, the story took off online. So much so, that Dasani's parent company Coca-Cola got involved shutting down the bogus rumors from the hoax news source website and urged people to drink up and “share the facts”.
Now that the rumor has resurfaced again, Coca-Cola responded to customers via Twitter in March 2018 saying “We want you to know Dasani is safe to drink. There is no recall of Dasani being conducted in the U.S., so please confidently continue to enjoy Dasani bottled water."
Just to make sure there wasn't some new recall we had missed, we double checked with the FDA, the group in charge of monitoring food and beverage recalls and nope, no Dasani water recalls were issued.
WUSA9 researchers verified water bottles have not been recalled due to parasite contamination. As for that transparent parasite, that's also wrong. The Verify team did some digging and found it's an eel in a larval stage called leptocephali, according to the Central Florida Aquarium Society.
As for parasites, being able to enter water bottled, when asked if that is something that occurs, University of Maryland Professor of Entomology, Michael Raupp, told WUSA9 researchers he never heard of such that happening.
