The link title implies all of these things were associated, but the article summary says only ischemic heart disease, and no association for the others, if I read correctly.
Water prices in urban areas are $1000 per acre-foot of water, because distribution is expensive. Desalination of brackish water can cost $1200-1500 per acre foot, and moderate improvements in costs could make desalination economically viable for urban water.
But it would require a truly massive improvement to be competitive for agricultural water use, and because most use of water is agricultural, we can only reap small benefits from desalination.
There is not enough flat, cultivatable land closer to the coasts to move much agriculture out of the central valley towards the coast, even if desal'd water was free.
For the upstream cities that use the Colorado River this could be quite beneficial.
I pretty sure most Californians would be happy if they got a few strategically placed desalination plants.
The best table salt we can currently get, it stuff mined from old oceans. No contaminants, no plastic, etc. For example, Windsor has huge mines in rural Windsor, ON, Canada.. and doesn't just supply table salt, but road salt, water softener salt, etc, the supply has been used for 100 years, sold internationally, and shows no sign of exhaustion... from one old-sea underground deposit.
(There's plenty of table salt, no shortages...)