ANCHORAGE, Alaska (AP) — Rapper-turned-actor Chris “Ludacris” Bridges sparked concern from some social media followers when he knelt on an Alaska glacier, dipped an empty water bottle into a blue, pristine pool of water and drank it. Video of Ludacris tasting the glacial water and proclaiming, “Oh my God!" got millions of views on TikTok and Instagram . Some viewers expressed concern that he was endangering his life by drinking the untreated water, warning it might be contaminated with the parasite giardia.
But an expert on glaciers from the University of Alaska in Fairbanks said the online brouhaha “was ludicrous.” “He’s totally fine,” glaciologist Martin Truffer said Wednesday. “It’s sort of understandable that somebody would be concerned about just drinking untreated water, but if you drink water from a melt stream on a glacier, that’s about the cleanest water you’ll ever get.
” Ludacris donned ice cleats to knock off a bucket list item and walk Knik Glacier, about 40 miles (64 kilometers) north of Anchorage, while he was in the nation’s largest state to perform Friday at the Alaska State Fair. He was clearly pleased by the taste of the glacial water. “I’m a water snob,” he said in a later video before a concert Tuesday in Minneapolis.
“It was the best tasting water I’ve ever had in my life.” Symptoms of giardiasis, the illness caused by giardia, include diarrhea, stomach cramps and dehydration. It can spread from one person to anot.