Our paper “Exposure to Selected Geogenic Trace Elements (I, Li, and Sr) from Drinking Water in Denmark” got published few days ago in the special issue “Medical Geology: Impacts of the Natural Environment on Public Health” of the peer-reviewed open-access online journal Geosciences.
The three trace elements iodine (I), lithium (Li), and strontium(Sr) have in common that they are essential (I) or possibly essential (Li, Sr) for humans. Currently they are used as part of pharmaceuticals or dietary supplements. Their concentrations in drinking water can vary spatially, and lifelong exposure to different naturally occurring levels may have an impact on public health in various ways. For further details on the public health relevance and the sources of I, Li, and Sr, click here.
Our general goal was to evaluate the potential for epidemiological studies of lifelong and chronic exposure to low doses of these naturally occurring in Danish drinking water geogenic elements. We found significant spatial variation in the exposure for all three elements, related mainly to geochemical processes. To estimate the exposure to I, Li, and Sr from drinking water we linked water chemistry data (assigned to the supply areas of the sampled waterworks) to two datasets with (1) the number of residents and (2) the number of households in the selected supply areas. Based on our findings we concluded that there is indeed a prospective opportunity for future epidemiological investigations of long-term effects of I, Li, and Sr, either alone or in combinations with other geogenic elements such as Ca, Mg, or F.
I hope you’ll enjoy reading it! Feel free to leave a comment or to contact me 🙂
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