The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) made it clear earlier this year: There is lithium in El Paso’s water supply.
EPA data released this spring identified small amounts of naturally occurring lithium in El Paso drinking water at multiple El Paso Water-owned facilities and wells in virtually every corner of the city.
EPA figures and numerous studies conducted in recent years show that lithium exists in the water supply not only of El Paso, but also of hundreds of other communities, mainly in dry areas of the western United States that depend on groundwater.
Lithium is an alkaline metal used in mental health treatments and, increasingly, in technologies such as electric vehicle batteries. Its presence is largely due to mineral deposits in places that used to be ancient seabeds.
Lithium and sodium are often found together in nature, including in the saltwater beneath eastern El Paso County. So water planners here have known for decades that lithium exists in the region’s geology and El Paso’s groundwater, but in recent years the EPA began requiring water utilities to measure lithium in their drinking water and submit data to the agency.
“Lithium is everywhere in El Paso water. I don’t think there’s anywhere where it’s not there,” John Balliew, CEO of El Paso Water, told El Paso Matters. “I don’t really see it as a problem, but we’re going to monitor it as requested by the EPA.”
It is the first part of a process in which the EPA will continue to measure the amount of lithium in groundwater across the United States, try to determine whether low levels of lithium cause significant human health effects, and then decide whether to regulate the amount of lithium allowed in drinking water.
However, so far, there is no conclusive evidence of negative impacts from consuming lithium at concentrations typically found in groundwater. Groundwater in part of the southern United States, in a region stretching from New Mexico east to Louisiana, contains lithium at concentrations typically around 39 micrograms per liter, according to a study published in 2022.
EPA data identified lithium at 21 of El Paso Water’s different facilities and wells in concentrations ranging from 20 to 85 micrograms per liter. Samples from a booster station along McRae Boulevard and another near El Paso International Airport showed the highest levels of lithium, above 80 micrograms per liter, during testing last October and January.
“We’ve known for a long time that there is lithium in our drinking water because it’s naturally present in the geology of our region,” said Anna Gitter, an assistant professor of environmental health at UTHealth Houston’s School of Public Health in El Paso.
“We live in an age where we can test for virtually anything in drinking water, as long as we have identified it,” he said.
Lithium and its impact on behavior
Lithium has long been used in medicine as a mood stabilizer and as a treatment for some mental disorders, but therapeutic doses are about 1,000 times higher than the concentration of lithium in El Paso groundwater, said Gitter, who was appointed by the El Paso City Council earlier this year to the board that governs El Paso Water.
Studies conducted over the years have attempted to identify the impact of lithium on human health.
There has been research indicating that there are lower levels of suicide and crime in areas with relatively high amounts of lithium in the water, echoing the urban myth that El Paso’s relatively low crime rate is because lithium in the area’s water reduces impulsivity and calms 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 across the United States with varying levels of crime. And water researchers question studies linking lithium to human health consequences, warning that the evidence is weak and no research has proven a putative causal link. That means no one has shown that lithium — and not other factors — is the cause of any health consequences, at least not in small concentrations.
“You can find correlations between everything,” said Paul Westerhoff, a Regents University professor and Fulton Chair of Environmental Engineering at Arizona State University who helped write the 2022 study on lithium in groundwater. “It’s a correlation, not a causality.”
Gitter noted that the World Health Organization has not recommended regulatory limits for lithium, and lithium is found in many different foods and can also be in bottled water.
“Yes, we are exposed to it on a daily basis,” Gitter said of lithium. “Just because it is present doesn’t mean it is harmful.”
Measuring other chemicals in water
Instead, the EPA has recently begun requiring utilities to measure PFAS, a family of compounds known as “forever chemicals” that have been used in many consumer products for decades but do not break down quickly in nature. Tests have shown that these chemicals have contaminated water, soil and animals.
In April, the EPA designated some PFAS as hazardous substances and set a legal limit for PFAS in drinking water.
“There are certainly health effects reported in the literature from PFAS. I don’t think there is any doubt about that,” Balliew said, contrasting with inconclusive research on lithium’s effects.
El Paso Water’s tests submitted to the EPA showed trace levels of some PFAS at three locations, which Balliew said the utility is treating with activated carbon to remove them. “We probably won’t have a huge problem” controlling PFAS, he said. Meanwhile, some Arizona cities have reported identifying the most harmful PFAS at concentrations ten times higher than in El Paso.
Treating PFAS is much easier than trying to remove lithium from water, and the cost of treating lithium would far outweigh any potential health benefits, Balliew said.
He said utilities cannot just extract lithium from water; sodium and potassium would also come out, creating large amounts of waste.
To make East El Paso’s salty groundwater drinkable, El Paso Water’s Kay Bailey Hutchison Desalination Plant near the airport uses reverse osmosis treatment, a technique that also removes lithium but is not used by El Paso Water at other treatment plants.
For every 100 gallons of brackish water pumped to the desalination plant, it produces a little more than 80 gallons of drinking water and about 20 gallons of ultra-salty waste that the utility has to transport 22 miles away and pump underground at a site in the northeast corner of El Paso County.
Trying to do the same with El Paso Water’s roughly 170 wells would generate more waste than the company wants to handle, Balliew said.
“If we were to do reverse osmosis across the city, we would lose 20% of our supply,” he said. “And then we would have a huge waste disposal problem.”
Major steps to limit lithium are unlikely
Westerhoff, an ASU environment professor, said the EPA would have to conclude there is a significant benefit to human health for the agency to take the sweeping step of requiring all U.S. water utilities to limit the amount of lithium in drinking water as it did with PFAS.
“It’s very expensive, very difficult to get lithium alone,” Westerhoff said. “If your water bill is going up fivefold just because of lithium, then… the risk-benefit may be pretty marginal.”
Lithium is not a cancer-causing carcinogen, so it’s less important than focusing on more dangerous compounds like PFAS, he said.
“I think some states will include in their health advisories advisory levels to reduce levels in some places where lithium concentrations are very high,” such as places with lithium concentrations above 100 micrograms per liter of drinking water, Westerhoff said. “The risks there and at levels of 10 micrograms per liter are very different.”
In the past, the EPA has requested data from utilities and has studied the possibility of regulating other substances, such as strontium, but the agency has never set a legal limit for strontium levels.
Balliew said it’s possible the EPA will investigate lithium levels and the element’s health effects but ultimately decline to regulate lithium in drinking water.
“We hope that this is the case – we don’t need to regulate lithium,” Balliew said. “Because lithium is so ubiquitous and closely associated with sodium and potassium, the expense will be huge compared to PFAS.”
As for the behavior and impulses of El Pasoans, Gitter dismissed lithium and offered a different explanation for the city’s relatively low crime rate over the years.
“Maybe,” he said, “the people of El Paso are just nice and cool.”
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