Drinking water may promote autism risk

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Nothing beats quenching your thirst with a cold glass of water. In Switzerland we are privileged to have clean drinking water. Tap water contains numerous particles, so-called minerals. They make the water drinkable and are considered healthy.

The light metal lithium also occurs in drinking water. Until now, this trace element was considered harmless. A new Danish-American study from the Yale School of Public Health challenges this knowledge. Are lithium ions more dangerous than you think?

Lithium research has made people sit up and take notice in the past

The researchers examined the relationship between a child’s risk of autism and the lithium content of the water near the parents. For this, the scientists examined the data of 8842 children with autism. For this they used the place of residence of the mothers and linked this to the lithium content of the drinking water there. They then compared the data with a control group of children who did not have autism.

Danish epidemiologists have already established a link between drinking water lithium and the risk of dementia in the past. In a second step, the goal was to investigate the effect of lithium on prenatal risk of autism, as study leader Zeyan Liew explained to the “world”.

Increased risk of autism

And indeed: the scientists come to the conclusion that the risk of a child being born autistic may depend on the lithium content of the water. The higher this is in the water drunk by the mother, the greater the chance that a child will be born with the developmental disorder.

Children with autism usually have reduced facial expressions and difficulty understanding or showing emotions. The study contains a certain explosiveness. Because: Lithium salts have long been considered the therapeutic agent in return for autism and dementia.

However, there is a catch: the researchers admit that they do not know whether the test subjects actually drank the drinking water or only used it for cooking. Food itself also contains lithium and can distort the results. Lithium content also varied widely from region to region. The measured water showed values ​​of up to 30.7 micrograms per litre.

Everything is going well in Switzerland

And what about the lithium in Swiss drinking water? When asked by Blick, the Federal Office for Food Safety (BLV) stated that the risk of a health hazard from lithium in drinking water was considered negligible. That is why lithium in Swiss drinking water is not routinely monitored and no maximum values ​​are set.

Drinking water in Switzerland is produced for 80 percent from groundwater. In 2005/2006, the Federal Bureau for the Environment carried out a groundwater study. This shows that the average in Switzerland is less than 3 micrograms per litre.

The results of the Danish-American study are therefore no cause for concern for Switzerland. The BLV cannot draw any conclusions about pregnant women and the risk of an autism spectrum disorder in newborns. “The results are correlations, not causation. As the authors themselves point out, further research on this topic is needed.”

Source: Blick