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Review of the Relation of Water Quality and Simple Goiter
Author(s) -
Woodward Richard L.
Publication year - 1963
Publication title -
journal ‐ american water works association
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.466
H-Index - 74
eISSN - 1551-8833
pISSN - 0003-150X
DOI - 10.1002/j.1551-8833.1963.tb01100.x
Subject(s) - pollutant , goiter , environmental chemistry , environmental science , water quality , thyroid , chemistry , medicine , endocrinology , biology , ecology , organic chemistry
This article discusses the presence of goitrogenic materials in some drinking waters. Stott and his colleagues considered hard water as a cause of goiter in their investigations, but their descriptions of the goitrous waters suggest that other pollutants might well have been abundant in these waters. Hettche's work on urochrome, although suggestive, is not definitive. Nitrates may be a factor, but no information is available on the effects of nitrates on human thyroid function, and their effect in experimental animals is weak. The common finding that boiling of the water eliminates the goitrogen suggests that a heat‐labile chemical may be involved. The possibility that an infectious agent is involved has been virtually eliminated by the epidemiologic and experimental observations. However, epidemiologic studies cannot be expected to determine which constituents in water are significant. One suspects that the emphasis in the literature on calcium and fluorine in water as goitrogens is related to the availability of relatively simple analytic methods for these elements. Unfortunately, analytic methods for organic pollutants in water are not so well developed.