By South China Morning Post | Created at 2025-03-25 10:03:35 | Updated at 2025-03-28 12:34:06
3 days ago
A woman in Shanghai who told of her health concerns after drinking “waste water” for five years because a worker wrongly installed her water purifier has trended on social media.
The problem was caused by an installer from the mainland’s leading consumer product manufacturer, Xiaomi, who did work at the woman’s home in September 2020.
The consumer, surname Liu, said she did not find any abnormalities until weeks ago when she bought a “water quality pen” device which showed the water coming out of her purifier had even worse quality than that from the tap.
According to the device, which measures the density of TDS (total dissolved solids), a key index for the pureness of water, the figure for the water from the purifier stood at 600, more than double that of the tap water.
At the suggestion of internet users, Liu checked the purifier and found that the pipes at the back of the machine had been installed the wrong way round.
As a result, the purified water was released into the sewer, but the “concentrated water”, a kind of waste water from the purifying process, was transformed to a water tap, from which Liu had anticipated she could receive clean water.
