GENEVA — In January The World Health Organization (WHO) is seeking to launch a multi-nation study of the possibility that hard water (typically, water containing calcium and/or magnesium) offers protection against human cardiovascular disease.
After a WHO-organized scientific conference and expert working group met in Baltimore, MD, in April 2006, the working group concluded that there was some evidence suggesting that water hardness, especially magnesium concentrations, may have a beneficial health effect. But it notes in the recent statement that the evidence reviewed in Baltimore “was not considered to be definitive.” Since then, WHO has decided that better-designed epidemiological studies are needed on the issue to draw firm conclusions that can be the basis of international public health policy.
WHO is inviting various nations to commence studies using as a guide the protocol used in an earlier study by the University of East Anglia of mortality among customers of public water supplies in the United Kingdom. WHO says it will not fund the new studies, but it will pool the data in an attempt to arrive at conclusions.
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