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posted by Fnord666 on Sunday October 21 2018, @06:46AM   Printer-friendly
from the salty-about-plastic dept.

Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:

Microplastics were found in sea salt several years ago. But how extensively plastic bits are spread throughout the most commonly used seasoning remained unclear. Now, new research shows microplastics in 90 percent of the table salt brands sampled worldwide.

Of 39 salt brands tested, 36 had microplastics in them, according to a new analysis by researchers in South Korea and Greenpeace East Asia. Using prior salt studies, this new effort is the first of its scale to look at the geographical spread of microplastics in table salt and their correlation to where plastic pollution is found in the environment.

"The findings suggest that human ingestion of microplastics via marine products is strongly related to emissions in a given region," said Seung-Kyu Kim, a marine science professor at Incheon National University in South Korea.

[...] The new study, she says, "shows us that microplastics are ubiquitous. It's not a matter of if you are buying sea salt in England, you are safe."

The new study estimates that the average adult consumes approximately 2,000 microplastics per year through salt. What that means remains a mystery.

A separate study by the University of York in Britain that sought to assess the risks of microplastics to the environment, published Wednesday, concluded not enough is known to determine if microplastics cause harm.

[...] That new study, funded by the Personal Care Products Council, an industry trade group, was published in the journal Environmental Toxicology and Chemistry.

Boxall added that the focus on microplastics may divert attention from worse environmental (and more easily identifiable) pollution problems, such as small particles released from car tires.

-- submitted from IRC


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  • (Score: 5, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday October 21 2018, @07:00AM (10 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday October 21 2018, @07:00AM (#751581)

    I have never understood the sea salt fad. WTF people??? Have you never been to the beach?

    We get seagull shit, cigarette butts, leaking diapers, dog turds, red tide, diesel fuel, and so much other junk. You want that in your food?

    I want my salt from igniting sodium in chlorine gas. I guess I'll settle for something dug from deep underground, but I won't like it. Sea salt is right out. NOPE NOPE NOPE.

    The real horror is when it ends up in packaged foods that I like. Triscuits is a sad example. They are tasty, there is no generic clone, and now... the box proudly proclaims that they contain filthy sea salt. OK, they didn't say "filthy", but we know. I can almost smell the seagull shit.

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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday October 21 2018, @07:45AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday October 21 2018, @07:45AM (#751585)

    I have seen generic Triscuits clones at Kroger and ALDI. I can't vouch for the taste.

    I don't think you get much cigarette butts or diesel fuel in sea salt. The microplastics are bad enough on their own.

  • (Score: 4, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday October 21 2018, @11:28AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday October 21 2018, @11:28AM (#751619)

    It's the same idiocy that says, "Oooh, 'raw sugar' that's brownish must be better for you" or even "I'll eat something 'natural' like honey (aka "bee vomit") over evil HFCS, even though honey basically contains similar proportions of glucose and fructose as HFCS with a few percent trace compounds." These idiots end up even being fed the same shit by companies with new names -- e.g., many products today contain "evaporated cane juice." It's 'juice' so it must be good for you, right? Except what is it? Basically sugar in a slightly different form. One of the big yogurt companies was even sued over deceptive labeling -- claiming "no added sugar" when its second ingredient was "evaporated cane juice."

    It's all bullshit... Or seagull shit. And yes, some sea salt tastes slightly different from purer crystallized sodium chloride because of trace minerals (or seagull shit), but chances are if you're putting enough salt on your food to taste a big difference, you're putting too much salt on your food.

    The "post-truth" era has affected hippy earthy crunchy food labeling in different ways -- trying to sell the same shit to people for four times the price by claiming it's "natural" when it's the same shit. My favorite is "uncured" meats. 97% of them are still cured -- because storing uncooked meat for long times is usually a recipe for deadly bacteria. They's just cured with stuff like "celery powder" which will be listed prominently in ingredients, which contains the same nitrates the hippy morons are trying to avoid.

    Read an article a little while back that measured nitrate levels in "uncured" products compared to standard normal.products -- and in most cases, the "uncured" products contained significantly more nitrates, likely because when you use bullshit like "celery powder" instead of pure chemical salts, you need to use more of it to ensure food safety because your curing agent has too much variability.

    Anyhow, serves the chemophobic "natural foods" morons right. Hopefully they die early of excessive nitrate consumption due to buying BS "uncured" meats soaked in seagull shit.

  • (Score: 5, Touché) by Pslytely Psycho on Sunday October 21 2018, @11:47AM (3 children)

    by Pslytely Psycho (1218) on Sunday October 21 2018, @11:47AM (#751620)

    As a truck driver, I picked many a load of salt from Salt Lake City. They mine it at the edge of the Great Salt Lake and it sits in piles while the birds add some whiteness to it and garbage is blown into from the wind. Not likely many dirty diapers but air pollution and rain full of air pollution as there is an oil refinery in the area as well. Salt mined from underground also sits above ground in huge piles before it's processed. Many of those locations have other mining or industrial activities nearby contributing to local pollution...and it all gets into the salt.

    Yeah, purdy gross.

    But most things can have a disgusting side. The stench near a sugar refinery will gag you, a strong stomach is required for meat packing or poultry production and the cereal plants in Cedar Rapids smell like burned eggs.

    Oddly enough, most waste treatment plants smell better than most food production.
    Yes nature is a filthy beast.

    Have I ruined eating entirely for you yet?

    --
    Alex Jones lawyer inspires new TV series: CSI Moron Division.
    • (Score: 2, Interesting) by koick on Sunday October 21 2018, @07:30PM (2 children)

      by koick (5420) on Sunday October 21 2018, @07:30PM (#751750)
      Since any precipitation that falls within the Great Basin [wikipedia.org] concentrates in the Great Salt Lake [wikipedia.org] that means all non-volatile pollutants (e.g. heavy metals [wikipedia.org]) do as well. Due to this lack of flushing/dilution and instead concentrating of all things, I certainly would not want to ingest salt from that area. Are you sure that salt you were hauling wasn't destined to be put in one of those 40lb bags for water softeners, meant to be spread on side walks/road ways, or used in some other industrial setting (i.e. not for human consumption)?

      It reminds me of hearing stories of people seeing all that corn growing in Iowa thinking, "Wow!, we eat a lot of corn!". When actually, except for rare, small fields of sweet corn, what you see is "field corn" [wikipedia.org], which is primarily used as livestock feed and ethanol production (with very little of it, after grinding down, consumed by humans directly).
      • (Score: 2) by Pslytely Psycho on Monday October 22 2018, @07:38AM (1 child)

        by Pslytely Psycho (1218) on Monday October 22 2018, @07:38AM (#751898)

        Both. Food grade is evaporated from the lake, while the industrial salts are mined from the basin.
        They are shipped separately as food grade can't be in the same trailers as commercial grade. And you pick them up at separate docks on opposite sides of the plant.

        It's still purdy gross!

        --
        Alex Jones lawyer inspires new TV series: CSI Moron Division.
        • (Score: 3, Interesting) by Pslytely Psycho on Monday October 22 2018, @07:51AM

          by Pslytely Psycho (1218) on Monday October 22 2018, @07:51AM (#751900)

          I've been retired a long time, and looking back at my photo album, I confused a plant in the Midwest with the SLC plant. You are correct, SLC salt is industrial.

          Getting old sucks.

          --
          Alex Jones lawyer inspires new TV series: CSI Moron Division.
  • (Score: 2) by takyon on Sunday October 21 2018, @12:38PM

    by takyon (881) <reversethis-{gro ... s} {ta} {noykat}> on Sunday October 21 2018, @12:38PM (#751627) Journal

    There's no way sea salt could be bad. It's got electrolytes! [standardvitamins.com]

    --
    [SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday October 21 2018, @02:50PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday October 21 2018, @02:50PM (#751663)

    Do you usually go around smelling seagull butts?

  • (Score: 3, Funny) by woodcruft on Sunday October 21 2018, @05:48PM

    by woodcruft (6528) on Sunday October 21 2018, @05:48PM (#751727)

    .. the box proudly proclaims that they contain filthy sea salt. OK, they didn't say "filthy", but we know. I can almost smell the seagull shit.

    You are right on the money, AC.

    Of course, we also know what else goes on in the sea...

    FISH F*CK IN IT!

    Purveyors of sea salt should be forced to label their product: "Contains: NaCl, microplastics, seagull shit & fish semen."

    Let's see what that does for sales...

    --
    :wq!
  • (Score: 2) by Alfred on Monday October 22 2018, @02:33PM

    by Alfred (4006) on Monday October 22 2018, @02:33PM (#751977) Journal
    Sea salt is not an accurate name but it is regulated. Regulation wise all salt is dumped into two bins. 1. All the salt that has iodine added and 2. all the salt that does not have iodine added which called sea salt.

    This categorization was clearly not made by anyone who understands chemistry because the sea has iodine in it. Iodized salt was made for the people inland who didn't eat enough fish to get enough iodine that the fish got from the ocean.

    I thought that Himalayan sea salt was a stupid thing. Hey marketing department! The oceans haven't risen that much. But all it really means is it is Himalayan salt that didn't have iodine added so it gets binned as sea salt.