Hard water may trigger child eczema

TAP water could be making your child’s eczema worse, King’s College researchers have found.

The painful condition, which causes dry and itchy skin, can be exacerbated by having a bath or shower in areas of hard water, which cover more than half of England.

The hard water damages the skin barrier and increases its sensitivity to soap or washing powder.

More than half of the one in five children who suffer from the condition have a genetic predisposition to a skin barrier defect, caused by a mutation in a gene that produces filaggrin.

The protein helps form the skin’s protection against sunburn and bacteria, but reacts badly with the chemicals in hard water, breaching the skin’s barrier.

The research was funded by a water softening company and published in the