the Public Health Service; in other words, by medically educated personnel.
In the former USSR, the first cue to possible health risks from low mineralized water was
provided in the mid 20th century by negative empirical experience gained with the
consumption of water from melted snow during polar and climbing expeditions and of
distilled water prepared on transoceanic ships. Other challenges were the need for drinking
water supplies in developing regions with a lack of fresh water particularly in Central Asia
and the search for water regeneration and recycling during long-term space flights. For
instance, in 1974 the USSR had over 100 desalination units based on electrodyalisis
(Sidorenko, 1974) as well as a nuclear distillation facility supplying water to over 100 000
inhabitants (Shtannikov, 1975) in the Kazakhstan town of Schevtshenko where the majority of
medical research was conducted. Medical research focused on two aspects: 1) health effects
of demineralised water, 2) minimal or optimal concentrations of total dissolved solids (TDS)
and selected essential elements that are vital in remineralized water.
The overwhelming majority of the Eastern European articles are in Russian due to the fact
that the majority of experiments were conducted in Russia and because Russian journals
published articles by foreign authors.