Hard Water Linked to Less Heart Disease

<body topmargin=0 leftmargin=0 marginheight=0 marginwidth=0> <table cellpadding=0 cellspacing=0 border=0><tr> <td valign="top" height=82 BGCOLOR="#111111" TEXT="#F7F7FF"> <div> <FONT SIZE="5" COLOR="#33CCFF" FACE="Comic Sans MS" ><B>Seven  Creeks  Roadside  Spring Water</B></FONT><B>     |     </B><A HREF="index.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Seven Creeks Roadside Spring Water"><B>home</B></A></div> <div> <A HREF="id427.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Health "><B><IMG SRC="0720e0e0.png" border=0 width="14" height="14" ALT="up" ALIGN="BOTTOM" HSPACE="0" VSPACE="0"></B></A><B>  </B><IMG BORDER="0" SRC="1x1.gif" HEIGHT="14" ALIGN="BOTTOM" HSPACE="0" VSPACE="0" WIDTH="14"><B>    </B><A HREF="id581.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Edible Peanut Shells "><B><IMG SRC="0710e0e0.png" border=0 width="14" height="14" ALT="previous" ALIGN="BOTTOM" HSPACE="0" VSPACE="0"></B></A><B>  </B><A HREF="id623.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Viruses found in untreated city water "><B><IMG SRC="0730e0e0.png" border=0 width="14" height="14" ALT="next" ALIGN="BOTTOM" HSPACE="0" VSPACE="0"></B></A></div> <div> </div> </td> </tr><tr> <td valign="top" height=398 BGCOLOR="#111111" TEXT="#F7F7FF"> <div> <I>Hard Water Linked to Less Heart Disease </I></div> <div> Tuesday, January 20, 2004  Hard Water, Fluoride Linked to Less Heart Disease</div> <bR> <div> NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - Rates of coronary heart disease in a community are lower when the hardness of drinking water and its fluoride level are high, investigators report. However, some individual elements in water -- including iron and copper -- appear to increase heart risk as their concentrations rise. </div> <div> Many studies have examined these factors but have produced inconsistent results, Dr. Anne Kousa, with the Geological Survey of Finland in Kuopio, and colleagues note in their report in the Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health. </div> <div> They revisited this issue after finding that geographical differences in heart disease rates in Finland could not be explained by individual lifestyle or genetic factors alone. The team obtained data from the Death Register and the Hospital Discharge Register for Finland to quantify first fatal and nonfatal heart attacks. Data on water hardness and trace element content were derived from the Geological Survey of Finland. </div> <div> Their analysis showed the annual heart attack rate was 562.1 per 100,000 men in areas where water hardness was less than 1.7 degree of Hardness (1.7 dH × 17.9 = 31ppm).<FONT SIZE="2" COLOR="#000000" FACE="Arial" > </FONT>This compares with 469.5 heart attacks per 100,000 men for areas where hardness ranged between 1.71(31ppm) and 5.2 degrees (93ppm), and 437.6 per 100,000 for areas where hardness was 5.2 degrees (93ppm) or higher.  <FONT SIZE="2" COLOR="#00FF00" FACE="Comic Sans MS" >For Seven Creeks Spring Water, the average hardness due to calcium, magnesium, potassium and phosphate is 98 ppm. If all colloidal minerals are included, the average hardness is 153 ppm. </FONT></div> <div> For each milligram of fluoride per liter of water, the risk of heart attacks decreased by 3 percent. In contrast, for each microgram-per-liter increase in copper and milligram-per-liter increase in iron, the heart attack risk increased by 4 percent and 10 percent, respectively. </div> <div> "Our study provides further supportive evidence for the importance of the ground water fluoride, iron and copper concentrations for the risk of (heart attack)," Kousa's team concludes. </div> <DIV ALIGN="LEFT"></DIV> <div> SOURCE: Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health, February 2004</div> <bR> <bR> </td> </tr></table></body>