How to clear self-intersecting polygons in a spatial database?

Question

I have some spatial data (MapInfo files) containing self-intersecting polygons. This causes problems in my processing, in particular I cannot generate geometric joins in PostGIS. Is there an easy way to solve the problem? I can deal with polygons if necessary.

Answer 1

I realized this myself: st_buffer(wkb_geometry,0) does the trick, at least on my data samples.