Salt of the Earth

Umbra on salt 5

Dear Umbra,

What's up with salt, environmentally speaking? Is it good for the Dead Sea if I buy Dead Sea salt (but then it travels halfway around the world)? Am I getting trace amounts of Bad Stuff in any sea salt these days? Is a big box of Morton iodized salt going to overload the bath-soaker with iodine? And how much of my bath salt is going to mess with the Great Lakes -- not nearly as much as the salted winter roads, I suspect.

Mo Ram
Lakeside, Ohio

Dearest Mo,

A shaker full of salty questions. As you know, eating a modest amount of salt is an important part of staying alive. Therefore one cannot be environmentally chaste about one's dietary use of salt. The main use of salt today, however, seems to be in chemical and manufacturing processes (such as making chlorine), so as we reduce our general overconsumption of Things, we will reduce our participation in any ecological problems with salt harvest and disposal.

A grain in the hand ...

Photo: iStockphoto

That said, you can stop purchasing salt from the Dead Sea.

All salt comes from contemporary or historical seas. The historical seas have left salt veins lying beneath the ground. The dry salt we use in food (and on roads) is mined or evaporated. Salt mines are room and pillar mines; the miners carefully remove the rock by blasting or boring, and calculate exactly where they need to leave salt pillars to hold up the ceiling of the mine. Rock salt for roads comes from room and pillar mining. Underground salt can also be captured by shoving water into the ground in order to dissolve the salt, then evaporating off the salt from the resultant brine.

Current oceans are mined for their salt in a different way, of course. In hot areas where evaporation exceeds precipitation, salt is harvested from water using a series of evaporative ponds. In one French salt-producing area, the mound of drying salt grows to be 2,460 feet long, with a million metric tons of salt. Apparently all salt used at table in the U.S. (much of it made here) is from vacuum pan evaporation, which is too technical for me to bother explaining other than to say it replicates solar evaporation inside a container.

... is worth a million metric tons in the heap.

Photo: iStockphoto

So what is up with salt, environmentally speaking? Well, salt extraction can have an impact on saline watersheds, which is in part what has happened to the shrinking Dead Sea. I'm sure your gourmet (or spa, whichever) Dead Sea salt is only a small contributor to the problem, with chemical industries making up the bulk of the issue. However, since you bothered to ask, you might as well bother to give up thinking that Dead Sea salt is any different or better than domestically produced non-gourmet salt. Chemically, they are the same salt.

As for road salt vs. bath salts -- jeepers, you would need to use a lot of bath salts to even approach the groundwater pollution and vegetation impacts of salt-based de-icing chemicals. Long before your bath salts became rock-salt comparable, your water usage would be off the charts, and that would be the larger concern during a home environmental audit. I'm out of space, and it's about health, so I beg off the iodine question.

Jobly,
Umbra

 

Yours is to wonder why, hers is to answer (or try). Send your green-living questions to Umbra.

Umbra Fisk is Grist Research Associate II, Hardcover and Periodicals Unit, floors 2B-4B.

Related Stories

Advertisement
Advertisement

  1. LynnW Posted 4:21 am
    06 Aug 2007

    salting the landExpanding the question on the use of salt in agriculture leaves me with the question of how long can we irrigate and fertilize farm ground before it fails to produce a profitable yield?  I understand that California has already had farm ground fail due to this problem. ??  Irrigation water brings in salt and evaporates just like water running into the4 dead sea.

    Permalink

  2. wayneluke Posted 5:32 am
    06 Aug 2007

    Salt IntakeI believe we get all the chemical salt we need from our regular food. Table salt does enhance the flavor of the food. MSG and a little sugar will have the same effect. All three allow the taste buds to pick up the flavors better. By itself, I don't think that table salt has any dietary benefit. Millions of people can't use table salt for health reasons.
    The only reason we think we need salt in our diet is the government has mandated that iodine be added to counteract deficiencies of this chemical in a modern processed food diet. Lack of iodine leads to thyroid problems and other related illnesses. Of course too much Iodine leads to the same problems
    http://www.nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus/ency/article/002421.ht ...
    I personally have not added table salt to my food for over 15 years now and make sure I eat foods with good levels of iodine.

    Permalink

  3. raevynn Posted 9:12 am
    09 Aug 2007

    On saltActually, salt is a rather under-appreciated food substance.

    Personally, I only use Sea Salt, as it actually contains the trace minerals that help to balance the sodium. Plain 'ole salt has nothing that the body needs.

    I agree that Iodine should be obtained some other way, as the amount in your box of Iodized salt is so low as to be meaningless, and the less salt you use, the less you get anyway.

    Eating natural foods, like fresh raw veggies, root veggies, sea vegetables, and fruit, will keep you far healthier than a blue box of salt.

    Permalink

  4. timdiller Posted 1:10 pm
    24 Aug 2007

    salt is still necessaryPlain old salt is still pretty necessary, especially for a buckets o' sweat producing, bike commuting in the summer Texan like me. Our blood, sweat, mucus, and tears are naturally pretty salty, and we lose salt when we sweat, cry, etc. If our body's sodium level gets out of balance, we can end up in pretty bad shape with dehydration. Hence the salt tablets consumed by long distance runners. I'm given to understand that after a while, our bodies will adapt to a certain sweat level and reduce the salt content of sweat in a conservation effort.

    Also, my impression is that salt is not always the same, due to the trace elements found in it. Apparently, sea salt is a pretty good match for our bodies' trace mineral needs and is a better dietary choice than pure sodium chloride. There may be some benefit to the Dead Sea salt after all, depending on its trace mineral content.

    Permalink

  5. psmith Posted 2:15 pm
    04 Feb 2008

    The importance of saltAs a macrobiotic eater, I'm here to tell you salt is very important, in small quantities, in our daily diet.  Two things, sea salt and sea veggies/weed contain ALL the minerals the human body needs.  Really  So no more mineral supplements necessary.  Just have a little of both daily.  The quality of the salt does matter.  And table salt, BTW, is just plain poison.
    Priscilla

    Permalink

Add a Comment

You are not logged in. Thus, you cannot post a comment. If you have an account, log in. If you don't have an account, well, by all means go make one! Meet you back here in five.

Hello, Visitor!    Why not register?

Viewed
More
Commented
More
Advertisement