Even trace amounts of arsenic in drinking water may increase the risk of heart disease, researchers have found.
That’s the conclusion of a new study lead by Ana Navas-Acien, a professor of epidemiology at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, who tracked heart disease rates an arsenic exposure in 4,000 Native Americans in the Dakotas and the Southwest,
The New York Times reports.
The results showed that as levels of arsenic rose in individuals, so did the rates of atherosclerosis, stroke, and heart attack. For those with chronic exposure to arsenic, rates of cardiovascular illness were often doubled, even after taking into account various lifestyle and genetic risks.
“On the question of whether arsenic is a cardiovascular risk, I would say yes, and I would put my hand in the fire to that,” Navas-Acien said.
Although the Environmental Protection Agency sets a 10 parts-per-billion safety standard for drinking water, only municipal water utilities are required to meet it.
In private wells, arsenic — resulting mostly from geological contamination of ground water — has been measured in much higher levels, in some cases more than one hundred times higher. The problem is acute in the Southwest, the upper Midwest, and northern New England.
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