Study: Possible diabetes link to arsenic in water
The study’s limitations make more research necessary. And public water systems were on their way to meeting tougher U.S. arsenic standards as the data were collected.
Still, the analysis of 788 adults’ medical tests found a nearly fourfold increase in the risk of diabetes in people with low arsenic concentrations in their urine compared with people with even lower levels.
Research outside the United States has linked high levels of arsenic in drinking water with diabetes. It’s the link at low levels that’s new.
The findings appear in Wednesday’s Journal of the American Medical Association.
“The good news is, this is preventable,” said lead author Dr. Ana Navas-Acien of Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health in Baltimore, Maryland.
New safe drinking water standards may be needed if the findings are duplicated in future studies, Navas-Acien said. She said they’ve begun a study of 4,000 people.
Arsenic can get into drinking water naturally when minerals dissolve. It is also an industrial pollutant from coal burning and copper smelting. Utilities use filtration systems to get it out of drinking water.
Seafood also contains nontoxic organic arsenic. The researchers adjusted their analysis for signs of seafood intake and found that people with type 2 diabetes had 26 percent higher inorganic arsenic levels than people without type 2 diabetes.
How arsenic could contribute to diabetes is unknown, but studies have found impaired insulin secretion in pancreas cells treated with an arsenic compound.
The policy implications of the new findings are unclear, said Molly Kile, an environmental health research scientist at the Harvard School of Public Health. Kile wrote an accompanying editorial in the journal.
Head on over and read The Microsoft Office for tips and tweaks on your windows OS.
August 21st, 2008 at 1:04 pm
[...] about the possible link between diabetes and arsenic over at Diabetes Health Talk. Did You Enjoy this Post? Subscribe to Freebies For Us. It’s Free! [...]
September 6th, 2008 at 8:38 pm
[...] bit of risk… by Lessa Not to long ago, my co-author here at Diabetes Health Talk wrote about risk of developing Type 2 diabetes being linked to trace levels of arsenic in tap water. While the article warned of the research still needed until a definitive answer would be provided, [...]