(C) El Paso Matters.org This story was originally published by El Paso Matters.org and is unaltered. . . . . . . . . . . Lithium ‘ubiquitous’ in El Paso drinking water, utility CEO says [1] ['Diego Mendoza-Moyers', 'More Diego Mendoza-Moyers', 'El Paso Matters', '.Wp-Block-Co-Authors-Plus-Coauthors.Is-Layout-Flow', 'Class', 'Wp-Block-Co-Authors-Plus', 'Display Inline', '.Wp-Block-Co-Authors-Plus-Avatar', 'Where Img', 'Height Auto Max-Width'] Date: 2024-07-14 The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency earlier this year made it clear: There’s lithium in El Paso’s water supply. EPA data published this spring identified small amounts of naturally-occurring lithium in El Paso’s drinking water, at different El Paso Water-owned facilities and wells in virtually every corner of the city. The EPA’s figures and numerous studies in recent years show lithium exists in the water supply of not only El Paso, but also hundreds of other communities, mostly in dry areas of the western United States that rely on groundwater. Lithium is an alkali metal that’s used for mental health treatments and increasingly for technologies such as electric vehicle batteries. Its presence is largely the result of mineral deposits in places that used to be ancient seabeds. Lithium and sodium are often found together in nature, including in the salty water that sits underneath the eastern part of El Paso County. So, water planners here have known for decades that lithium exists in the region’s geology and in El Paso’s groundwater, but the EPA in recent years started asking water utilities to measure lithium in their drinking water and submit data to the agency. John Balliew “Lithium is ubiquitous in El Paso’s water. I don’t think there’s any spot that doesn’t have it,” John Balliew, El Paso Water’s chief executive, told El Paso Matters. “I don’t really see it as an issue, but we’re going to monitor it just like the EPA requests.” It’s the early part of a process in which the EPA will continue gauging the amount of lithium in groundwater across the United States, try to determine if low levels of lithium cause major effects to human health, and then decide whether or not to regulate the amount of lithium allowable in drinking water. However, as of now, there’s no conclusive evidence of negative impacts from consuming lithium at the concentrations typically found in groundwater. The groundwater in a portion of the southern United States – in a region that spans from New Mexico east to Louisiana – holds lithium at concentrations usually around 39 micrograms per liter, according to a study published in 2022. The EPA data identified lithium at 21 of El Paso Water’s different facilities and wells at concentrations ranging from about 20 to 85 micrograms per liter. Samples from a booster station along McRae Boulevard and another near the El Paso International Airport showed the highest levels of lithium – north of 80 micrograms per liter – during tests last October and in January. Anna Gitter, El Paso Public Service Board member and assistant professor with the El Paso Campus of the University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston School of Public Health (Courtesy El Paso PSB) “We’ve known for a long time that there’s lithium in our drinking water, because it’s naturally occurring in the geology of our region,” said Anna Gitter, an El Paso-based assistant professor of environmental health with UTHealth Houston School of Public Health. “We live in a day and age now where we can test for almost anything in our drinking water, and it’s just something that we’ve identified,” she said. Lithium impact on health, behavior Lithium has long been used in medicine as a mood stabilizer and as treatment for some mental disorders. But therapeutic doses are roughly 1,000 times greater than the concentration of lithium in El Paso’s groundwater, said Gitter, who was appointed by the El Paso City Council earlier this year to sit on the board that governs El Paso Water. Studies over the years have attempted to identify the impact of lithium on human health. There’s been research conducted that indicates lower levels of suicide and crime rates in areas with relatively high amounts of lithium in the water, an echo of the urban myth that El Paso’s relatively low crime rate is the result of lithium in the area’s water reducing impulsivity and calming El Pasoans. Another recent study attempted to link lithium in drinking water to autism in children. Yet lithium exists in the groundwater of hundreds of cities and towns throughout the United States with varying levels of crime. And water researchers dispute studies that connect lithium to human health outcomes, cautioning that the evidence is weak and no research has proven a so-called causal link. That means no one has proven that lithium – and not other factors – is the cause of any health outcomes, at least not at small concentrations. “You can find correlations between everything,” said Paul Westerhoff, a Regents Professor and the Fulton Chair of Environmental Engineering at Arizona State University, who helped author the 2022 study about lithium in groundwater. “It’s a correlation, not a causation.” Gitter pointed out that the World Health Organization has not recommended regulatory limits on lithium, and lithium is found in many different foods and can be in bottled water as well. “So yeah, we’re exposed to it on a daily basis,” Gitter said of lithium. “Just because it’s there does not mean it’s harmful.” Measuring other chemicals in water By contrast, the EPA recently began requiring utilities to measure PFAS, a family of compounds known as “forever chemicals” that have been used in many consumer products for decades but don’t break down quickly in nature. Tests have shown the chemicals have contaminated water, soil and animals. The EPA in April designated some PFAS as hazardous substances and set a legal limit on PFAS in drinking water. “Certainly, there are health effects in the literature reported from PFAS. I don’t think there’s any doubt of that,” Balliew said, drawing a contrast with the inconclusive research on the effects of lithium. El Paso Water’s tests submitted to the EPA showed minimal levels of some PFAS in three locations, which Balliew said the utility is treating with activated carbon to remove. “We probably will not have a huge problem” managing PFAS, he said. Meanwhile, some cities in Arizona have reported identifying the most harmful PFAS at concentrations 10 times greater than in El Paso. Treating PFAS is far easier than trying to remove lithium from water, and the cost to treat lithium would far outweigh any potential health benefits, Balliew said. He said utilities can’t yank just lithium out of the water alone; sodium and potassium would come out, too, and create large amounts of waste. At the Kay Bailey Hutchinson Desalination Plant, rows of reverse osmosis membranes, layered in tubes, filter brackish water into concentrate and permeate, creating as much as 27.5 million gallons of potable water each day. (Corrie Boudreaux/El Paso Matters) In order to make the salty groundwater in eastern El Paso drinkable, El Paso Water’s Kay Bailey Hutchison Desalination Plant near the airport uses reverse osmosis treatment, a technique that also removes lithium but that El Paso Water doesn’t implement at other treatment plants. For every 100 gallons of brackish water pumped into the desalination plant, it produces just over 80 gallons of potable water and about 20 gallons of ultra-salty waste that the utility has to pipe 22 miles away and pump underground at a site in the northeastern corner of El Paso County. Trying to do the same for all of El Paso Water’s 170 or so wells would create more waste than the utility wants to handle, Balliew said. “If we were to have to do (reverse osmosis) all across the city, then we’re going to lose 20% of our supply,” he said. “And then we’re going to have a huge waste disposal” problem. ‘Big action’ on lithium limits unlikely Westerhoff, the ASU environmental professor, said the EPA would have to conclude there’s a major benefit to humans’ health for the agency to take the big action of requiring every U.S. water utility to limit the amount of lithium in drinking water like it did for PFAS. El Paso Water’s Upper Valley Water Treatment Plant. (Courtesy El Paso Water) “It’s very expensive, very difficult to pick up just lithium,” Westerhoff said. “If your water bill goes up by five times just because of lithium, then … it may be pretty marginal, the risk benefit there.” Lithium isn’t a cancer-causing carcinogen, and so it’s less important than focusing on more dangerous compounds like PFAS, he said. “I think it’s going to be one of these things that some states will put in health advisory levels, to just bring down some of the really high (locations),” such as places with lithium concentrations over 100 micrograms per liter of drinking water, Westerhoff said. “The risks there and at (10 micrograms per liter) are very different.” In the past, the EPA has requested data from utilities and examined regulating other substances, such as strontium. But the agency has never issued a legal limit on strontium levels. Balliew said it’s possible the EPA investigates lithium levels and the element’s health effects but ultimately declines to regulate lithium in drinking water. “Hopefully that’s the case: That lithium, we don’t need to regulate it,” Balliew said. “Because lithium is so ubiquitous, and it’s closely associated with sodium and potassium, the expense is going to be massive in comparison to the PFAS.” And as far as El Pasoans’ behavior and impulses, Gitter dismissed lithium and offered a different explanation for the city’s relatively low rate of crime over the years. “Maybe,” she said, “El Paso people are just nice and great.” [END] --- [1] Url: https://elpasomatters.org/2024/07/14/lithium-el-paso-drinking-water-safe-epa/ Published and (C) by El Paso Matters.org Content appears here under this condition or license: Creative Commons CC BY-ND 4.0 International. via Magical.Fish Gopher News Feeds: gopher://magical.fish/1/feeds/news/elpasomatters/