Highly saline drinking water threatens residents of the coastal region with hypertension, participants heard at a seminar yesterday.
The country’s coastal population consumes twice as much salt – just by drinking water – than the World Health Organisation recommends, the International Centre for Diarrhoeal Disease Research, Bangladesh (icddr,b) has found.
The World Health Organisation says the maximum daily salt intake should be 5 grams, but in coastal areas the high salinity of drinking water has meant that locals are taking in 200% the maximum daily amount.
The icddr,b revealed its findings at a seminar titled “Drinking Water Salinity and Hypertension in Coastal Bangladesh” held yesterday morning at the institution’s auditorium.
It said ingesting too much salt causes high blood pressure and increases the risk of cardiovascular disease. The coastal population is especially at risk, seminar participants heard.
The study found that increases in blood pressure could be quickly reversed if people switched to a low-salt alternative water source, such as rainwater or distilled water.
It found that ingesting 100mg less sodium per litre of drinking water could lower the odds of developing hypertension by 16%.
The study was initiated by Imperial College London in collaboration with Dhaka University’s Department of Geology and icddr,b. As part of the study, adults were followed up for 18 months as their blood pressure, water salinity levels and several other factors that could otherwise influence blood pressure were measured.
The study was conducted on 624 families of 12 villages in Dacope, Batiaghata and Paikgachha upazilas under Khulna district.
Previous work at the Imperial College London showed that drinking water that has high levels of salt could affect the health of pregnant women in southern Bangladesh, said keynote speaker Dr Adrian Butler, Reader in Subsurface Hydrology at London Imperial College, at the seminar.
“Researchers at the time found that women drinking highly salty water were five times more likely to suffer from pre-eclampsia than those who drink water with low salt concentration,” he added.
Md Raisul Alam Mondal, director general of the Department of Environment, said: “Around 35 million people are living in the coastal areas and they are in a vulnerable situation because of the climate crisis. However, all government departments and ministries concerned are working together to address the problems.”