Extracting lithium from brine is a standard way to produce the metal.
"Solvents from the paint store, lithium from batteries, Sudafed -- I know a lot of this stuff could kill me," Ms. Brooks said in an interview.
"We believe that demand is slated to rise dramatically," according to a recent report by the investment adviser Byron Capital Markets, predicting a 40 percent increase in demand for lithium from 2009 to 2014.
Recycling of lithium from used batteries could become an important source, in which case "the demand for virgin material would be reduced," said R. Keith Evans, a geologist who serves as a consultant to lithium producers.
Now that I understand the cyclical nature of my sleeplessness, I no longer use sleeping pills, and my medication cupboard, once a veritable pharmacopeia stocked with everything from Lamictal to lithium, from Wellbutrin to Seroquel, is all but empty.
To that end, Comibol is investing about $6 million in a small plant near the village of Río Grande on the edge of Salar de Uyuni, where it hopes to begin Bolivia's first industrial-scale effort to mine lithium from the white, moonlike landscape and process it into carbonate for batteries.
