Over twenty years ago Dr Joseph M Price demonstrated the undeniable connection between the practice of chlorinating water supplies and arteriosclerosis, in which a plaque composed mainly of cholesterol builds up inside arteries, resulting eventually in heart attacks and strokes.

Cholesterol is a lipid (fatty) substance present in all animal cells and essential to life; it's a precursor for many common bio chemical compounds. But when excess chlorine has been absorbed from drinking chlorinated water, it reacts 'with some of the cholesterol in the blood, forming the yellowish fatty deposits that accumulate along artery walls, narrowing and hardening them, and often causing ruptures.

The fact that the buildup is mostly cholesterol has led to the common assumption that the amount of cholesterol consumed is what determines susceptibility to heart disease. But while reducing cholesterol intake can tower risk somewhat, the theory that cholesterol is the sole cause of heart attacks has serious flaws.

It ignores the fact that heart attacks were virtually unknown until this century, when chlorination of water began, and they remain quite rare in places such as China as long as the practice is not adopted. It also does not explain how people such as eskimos with massive cholesterol intakes remain free of heart disease. .

Nor does it account for the buildup of a chemically similar deposit on inorganic surfaces where chlorine and cholesterol come in contact, such as in containers and hoses which are washed in chlorinated water, then used in dairies for handling milk, which of course is full of cholesterol. This and much related evidence is detailed in Dr Price's 1969 book, "Coronaries, Cholesterol, Chlorine" (Jove Books, NY, USA).

Chlorine in water also reacts with other substances present to form such carcinogens as chloroform and assorted organic halides. Chlorine, fluorine, iodine and bromine are known as halogens ('salt formers'). These all have seven electrons in the outer orbits, so to fill in the eighth they readily latch on to electrons in other atoms. Since they seldom part with electrons, they and their compounds tend to be very non-conductive, so their roles in our conductive processes come to a grinding halt. Their relative scarcity is a lucky break for life in general.