According to statistics provided on the website of the Salt Institute, a North American nonprofit trade association, the five biggest “dry” salt producers in 2006 were, in decreasing order: China, the U.S., Germany, India and Canada. Dry salt refers to the crystallized form extracted from mines underground, otherwise known as “rock salt” or “halite.”
While the salt industry generally refers to the top global dry salt producers, many smaller community or family businesses and their distributors can be considered part of the industry for their roles in salt “farming” and channeling the product to local and global markets.
How Salt is Mined and Harvested
Salt deposits are found wherever there are oceans or where geologically there have been oceans or saline lakes at one time in Earth’s history. For example, the Salar de Uyuni in Bolivia, the world’s largest salt flat, was created after a prehistoric lake dried up. Salt can be harvested three ways:
- Solution Mining - Water is pumped underground to dissolve some of the rock salt, then the brine is pumped to the surface where the water is evaporated to produce “refined”salt crystals.
- Shaft Mining - Underground rock salt beds are chipped or blasted into smaller pieces and transported above ground where they are processed. This is the most-used method in the U.S.
- Solar Evaporation - Salt is extracted from oceans, seas and salt lakes by growing crystals, which is the most cost-efficient method and is most suitable in dry and windy climates. This is called solar salt production, and yields commercial supplies of “sea salt.”
An example of naturally occurring “solar” salt would be the sodium chloride that is crystallizing at the edges of the Dead Sea as the size of that sea is shrinking. The water there has become so concentrated with salt that it has reached a point where the sodium chloride is precipitating out.
Salt Throughout History
Salt’s many purposes throughout history, which gave birth to and shaped the current industry, include food preservation, for mummification, for use in religious ceremonies and cultural rituals, as currency, for medicinal purposes, as the center of warfare and taxation, among other things, according to details in the 2002 book by Mark Kurlansky entitled Salt: A World History.
The word salary has its origins from the word salarium, which was “salt money’’- or wages paid in salt to members of the ancient Roman army. Kurlansky writes that Ernest Jones, a colleague of Sigmund Freud, pointed out that the Romans “called a man in love salax, in a salted state (lustful), which is the origin of the word salacious.”
The Most Common Uses for Salt Today
Today there are five major categories for the uses of salt. They are:
- Salt for de-icing roads and highways during winter
- Food grade salt for human consumption
- Agricultural salt for plants and animals
- Chemical salt for industrial applications
- Water conditioning salt to soften hard water
In fact, according to the Salt Institute, most salt production is not for use by the general public for consumption, but for commercial purposes, with “about 40%... used as the raw material that chemical companies transform into chlorine and soda ash, the foundations of organic chemistry.” Salt derivatives include anything made with compounds from chlorine (such as hydrochloric acid), or sodium (such as baking soda).
There are thousands upon thousands of uses for salt. It is used in industry for electrochemical processes, for textile dyes, leather tanning, soap and glass making, nuclear technology, clean energy initiatives, and many other applications for which sodium and/or chlorine are required.
When people pick up the salt shaker at dinner time they probably have no idea how such an easily accessible and low-cost product as sodium chloride has such a long and complex cultural history, and an invaluable role in their everyday living.
For more information, the Salt Institute provides an Articles & References page on their website for the general public to gather more information.
Sources:
- Bram, Leon L.; Dickey, Norma H. and Phillips, Robert S, eds. “Salt,”Funk & Wagnall’s New Encyclopedia, Vol. 21. New York: Funk & Wagnall’s, Inc., 1979.
- Kurlansky, Mark. Salt: A World History. New York: Walker and Company, 2002.
- Mish, Frederick C., ed. Webster’s 9th New Collegiate Dictionary. Springfield, MA : Merriam-Webster, Inc., 1987.
- "Salar de Uyuni." Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. 1 May 2009. <http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Salar_de_Uyuni&oldid=287190915>.
- Salt Institute, 2009. The Salt Institute. 30 April 2009 <www.saltinstitute.org>.
 |
