Abstract

The high incidence of intestinal parasites among the Korean people almost same as 40 years ago might be partly interpreted by the fact that they are all fond of raw vegetables cultivated on the farms fertilized with non-treated night soil. The cabbages, onions and radishes were collected from the five areas of Seoul vicinity and the number of parasites attached to those vegetables were investigated to compare with the results obtained 10 years ago by the same methods of sampling and examination as the present survey. The resultant findings were summarized as follows: The eggs of Ascaris, hookworm, Trichostrongylus and whipworm, rhabditoid larvae and filariform larvae of hookworms were detected from those vegetables. Additionally, a number of larvae of free living nematodes and morphologically undetermined eggs were also observed. The maximum number of parasites found from one vegetable were as follows: 16 Ascaris eggs on a cabbage, 27 hookworm eggs on an onion, 8 whipworm eggs on a cabbage, 68 filariform larvae of hookworm on an onion. The onions were highly contaminated by the number of parasites as much as 177.6 including the larvae of free living nematodes, the next being the cabbages with 25.3 and the radishes with 4.1 in average. No notable relationship was observed between the size of vegetables and the number of parasites attached to them. Ascaris eggs were found from 56 percent of all cabbages, 28 percent of the onions and 40 percent of the radishes; whipworm eggs were detected on 40 percent of radishes and the filariform larvae of hookworms were observed from 40 percent of onions examined. It may be concluded that there is no notable change in the number of parasites attached to the vegetables collected from the Seoul vicinity compared to the results investigated by the same method 10 years ago.