Why Your Tap Water Might Be Poisoning Your Brain Ep 802
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Hi there and welcome to this podcast. If you know me well and you've listened to a lot of Adept English podcasts, you know I like to cover scientific research. And when science finds out something new and useful, I enjoy talking about that, especially when it's to do with health, the environment...

or our psychological well-being, our mental health in other words. So today's topic, it's about your health and it will concern you and your health because it's about the water we all drink. I'm going to look at two science-related news articles.

one from this year, one from last year. Both are interesting in their own right, but I do wonder whether there's a connection between them. Why not listen and see what you think? My hope is that as listeners to this podcast, you'll also enjoy the combination of these topics with the opportunity to work on your English. We are an English language learning podcast, first and foremost.

but with a difference. I like to cover interesting topics to keep you listening and so that through your interest, your brain gets more opportunity to learn English through listening. The best way, the only way, in fact, to move towards being fluent.

Hello, I'm Hilary and you're listening to Adept English. We will help you to speak English fluently. All you have to do is listen. So start listening now and find out how it works.

So I'm not a scientist, but I'm covering these two topics in the same podcast because I thought they were worth hearing in their own right, but also interesting to hear together. I couldn't find research which confirmed the link, but see what you think. Enough intrigue,

Here goes. So both today's topics are about drinking water. The first news item I'm talking about was covered by most of the British newspapers on the 25th of January 2025, just a few weeks ago then. A headline from MSN, Microsoft Network, millions living in soft water areas could

develop dementia. In The Independent, a British newspaper, this headline, landmark study links household water to degenerative diseases. Is your area affected? So let's unpack a bit of vocabulary here. Millions living in soft water areas could develop dementia. Dementia is something none of us want. It can affect your brain towards the end of your life and it takes many things away from us.

your independence, your personality, your abilities and your dignity as well sometimes. Nobody wants Alzheimer's, do they? And what do we mean by soft water areas? Well, in the UK, as in other countries, there are naturally areas where the water is soft,

and areas where we have hard water. So we're talking here about tap water, water that comes out of your tap. In the UK, tap water is safe to drink, so we also call it drinking water. So our tap water is said to be hard, H-A-R-D. If we live in areas where there are lots

of minerals, things like calcium and magnesium in the water. You can usually tell because it means your shower is harder to keep clean. If you use a kettle, K-E-T-T-L-E, to heat water, you can see these minerals collecting on the inside of your kettle. You need to clean it sometimes. And if you have soft water, this means you don't have this problem. You have fewer mineral deposits.

Usually this means you live in an area where there's very hard rock or granite, so there aren't many minerals in your water. We often call these deposits, D-E-P-O-S-I-T, in the water. So I'm from the northwest of England and I grew up with lovely soft water. I

I say lovely because we tend to think of soft water as nice. There aren't those problems with the kettle, you don't have problems cleaning your bathroom, soap works better in soft water areas and you can get a nicer cup of tea with soft water. But when I was 25, I moved to the south east of England and I've lived here ever since. Here, the water is really hard.

just like it is in London. It doesn't taste as nice. It's harder to make that good cup of tea. And as I've said, it's much harder to keep your bathroom, in particular your shower, nice and clean and shiny. But new research has shown there's a link between dementia and our drinking water.

apparently you are much less likely to get dementia in the areas of the UK where the water is hard. So this research was covered in most of the UK newspapers in January this year. So another headline in The Independent was Landmark study links household water to degenerative diseases. So degenerative means it causes gradual damage.

Things like Alzheimer's, that's a degenerative disease of the brain. The article asks, is your area affected? And it shows maps of the UK, the areas which have soft water and therefore where people are more likely to develop dementia. Even if you don't drink cold tap water, most of us drink tap water in the form of tea or coffee and other drinks.

and of course we consume it with our food and when we clean our teeth. So there's no escaping your drinking water, just a word about Adept English. If you are struggling to speak English, our course, The 500 Most Common Words in English, will ensure that you have all the basic, the most essential words in the English language. This course will make sure you know them and in fact

In fact, this course covers a lot more than 500 words. That's not just because there's an extra section at the end which covers the 600 words, but it's because of the way we count words. So a verb like 'to come' is counted as one word. And this includes all forms of that verb, like 'came', 'coming'.

and comes. They all count as one word. So this course is not as simple as you might think, but it is covering all the basic essential words in English. If you're at that point where you can understand the podcast but find speaking difficult, this course will make sure that you know all the essential vocabulary really well so that you can start to speak. Find this course, The Most Common 500 Words in English,

on our website, adeptenglish.com. Okay, so news item number two. This was something that I covered in one of our subscription episodes recently, episode 16, on microplastics. This was science news back in 2024. And again, it was covered by many of the mainstream newspapers. My particular source here, an article on the website New Atlas.

published 5th of March 2024. So just over a year ago with the title, there's a surprisingly simple way to remove microplastics from your drinking water. The article talks about the quantity, the amount of microplastics now in our drinking water and how we're all taking in what the article calls concerning quantities.

of microplastics in our food and our drink. I don't think it matters whether you drink tap water, as many people in the UK and other countries do, or you drink bottled water. You're still taking in microplastics.

But this news item was what I call a good news item, meaning that it has a positive message. Scientists studying microplastics at Guangzhou Medical University and Jinan University in China believe they have found a simple way of removing microplastics from water. And it's one you can do at home in your kitchen.

Even better. They studied soft and hard tap water. Hard being the type, remember, that's rich in minerals like calcium and magnesium. They added micro and nano plastics into the water and they boiled it. To boil, B-O-I-L, means to heat the water to 100 degrees centigrade. They then looked at the amount of microplastics in the water after boiling. The result?

Well, they found that boiling water removed between 25% and 90% of the microplastic. But, and this is the part I wanted to draw your attention to,

The removal of microplastics was much more successful with the hard water. So the effectiveness depended upon the type of water. This method removed microplastics much more effectively in hard water, up towards the 90% end, than it did in the soft water, down towards the 25% end.

The effect of microplastics in the body are still being studied. The article says that these plastics have already been linked to changes in the gut microbiome and the body's antibiotic resistance. But some of the more recent science

concerns microplastics in the brain. They seem to accumulate here particularly. And guess what? The science is starting to link dementia to the concentrations of microplastics in our brains. If you'd like more information on this, I'm going to be covering this topic in episode 57 of the Adept English subscription service. For now, though,

I'm just wondering whether that cup of tea or coffee, which I enjoy regularly throughout the day, is actually even healthier than I thought. In common with many people, I'm not great at just drinking plain tap water.

But I do drink a lot of tea and coffee, sometimes decaf, so that it helps with hydration. As I've said before, Adept English runs on cups of tea and coffee. Could it be that a tea drinking habit coupled with living in a hard water area is actually protective of the brain because it's removing the plastic particles from the water? If this is the case, we all need to know about it.

and change our habits because of it. And if there are a higher percentage of people in soft water areas getting dementia, then governments and health systems need to take this into account. They need to know about it. Then they can act. Prevention is better than cure is one of our sayings in English. And I would add that preventative medicine is better than the medicine you get

when you're already ill. Just think how this information could improve people's lives if it's proved correct and it's validated. So don't forget, if you'd like more information about microplastics and the brain, then subscribe to get that episode number 16. And soon on the subscription service, I'll also be covering

news items which say your brain might have a spoon-sized amount of plastic in it. Subscribe if you want to listen to that.

It's coming soon. Am I jumping to conclusions or does this seem to have a logic to it, which suggests further study of this possible association may be worthwhile? I emphasise I'm not a scientist. I'm just reporting what I read. Let us know what you think of this. I'd be really interested to hear from you. Enough for now. Have a lovely day. Speak to you again soon. Goodbye.