[Water intake of primary and middle school students in four cities of China]

To investigate total intake of drinking water of primary and middle school students in four cities of China, and to provide scientific evidence for developing standard of intake of drinking water for primary and middle school students in China.

A total of 5914 primary and middle school students were selected from Beijing, Shanghai, Chengdu and Guangzhou using multi-stage random sampling method and 5868 subjects completed the survey. The information on the amounts of daily drinking water was recorded for seven consecutive days using a 24 hour measurement. The amounts of daily drinking water among different cities and ages and between boys and girls or urban and rural were analyzed.

The average daily total drinking water of subjects was (1089 ± 540) ml, with significant differences among the four cities ((1165 ± 549), (1126 ± 544), (866 ± 421), (1185 ± 568) ml in Beijing, Shanghai, Chengdu and Guangzhou, respectively; F = 114.28, P < 0.05). The average daily drinking water was significantly higher in boys (1157 ± 575) ml than in girls (1026 ± 498) ml (Z = 8.88, P < 0.05), and in urban (1185 ± 578) ml than in rural (991 ± 480) ml (Z = 13.94, P < 0.05). The difference among different ages was statistically significant (F = 91.53, P < 0.05) with ascending order in 7 - 10, 11 - 13 and 14 - 17 years old ((953 ± 483), (1134 ± 551) and (1170 ± 557) ml respectively).

The daily consumption of total drinking water is different in primary and middle school students among different cities, regions, genders and ages.