Hard Water, Soft Arteries?

Housewives dislike hard water because it does not lather well, but it may prolong their lives, and more especially their husbands'. A surprising relationship between a high mineral content in drinking water and low death rates from heart-and-artery disease was reported last week in the A.M.A. Journal.

With a few minor (still unexplained) exceptions, all the statistical findings are directly opposite to what would be assumed on the basis of "superficial thinking or snap judgment," said Dartmouth College's Physiologist Henry A. Schroeder. In fact, when he began his study, he expected to find that hard water went with hard arteries. He took off from a 1950-51 U.S. Geological Survey study of water supplies for 1,315 cities, covering 90% of the urban and 58% of the total population. The survey assigned a "hardness index" to water, found the national average was 97. Dr. Schroeder compared the states' index figures with their mortality, found no relationship with overall death rates. But he found a striking relationship with the death rates from heart-artery diseases.

Of 25 states with harder-than-average water, all but Florida and Kentucky are north or west of the Ohio River. And in these 25, except Indiana and Illinois, death rates from heart-artery disease are below the national average. In more than two-thirds of the soft-water states (east or south of the Ohio, plus Louisiana, Arkansas, Oregon and Washington--see map), the rates were above average.

Differences in racial stock, diet, occupation and living habits offer no explanation, Dr. Schroeder believes. And though he feels that something in the water may be responsible, the precise ingredient eludes him. The evidence excludes practically all the known factors: iron, manganese, sodium, potassium, magnesium, calcium, carbonates, sulfates and nitrates, and a variety of softening agents. Also --and most important from the public-health standpoint--it shows that addition of chlorine and fluorides has no effect on heart-artery disease. One clue: the more alkaline the water, the greater the protective effect on human arteries. This may be because more acid waters, which build up "rust in the pipes" to plague plumbers, also pick up impurities that create "rust" in the body's pipes.

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