Can Drinking Water Lead to Diabetes?
We’ve long considered most cases of diabetes a lifestyle disease, associated with poor diet and a lack of exercise, but now researchers have found that other factors beyond heredity may also play a role, specifically environmental ones. I spoke with one of the leading researchers in this area, Ana Navas-Acien, MD, PhD, assistant professor and researcher at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health at Johns Hopkins University, about how environmental toxins impact the development of diabetes and what we can do to protect ourselves. IS IT SAFE TO DRINK THE WATER? In one recent study, scientists found that arsenic, a naturally occurring element in the environment that results when minerals dissolve in rocks and soil, was related to the prevalence of type 2 diabetes. This is potentially very important, since an estimated 8% of public water supplies in the US have levels of inorganic arsenic higher than the safety standard established by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA),
