Easiest way is probably to get the pink salt from the Himalayas. The health claims around it are bogus, but as it's mined from the mountains (and usually sold in a highly unrefined format) it's fairly unlikely ocean microplastics have wound up in it. It's also readily identifiable in a way white chunks of salt aren't.
> In another indicator of the geographic density of plastic pollution, microplastics levels were highest in sea salt, followed by lake salt and then rock salt.
Isn't there a slight worry that since it's not refined it might contain other harmful stuff? I admit I only read this once in passing and didn't investigate further.
Also, does the Himalayan salt contain iodine? Because otherwise you may soon get a iodine deficiency. The reason iodine is added in table salt in the first place is because most people would be deficient otherwise.
Even before iodized salt, goiters were location dependent. The modern diet likely contains enough iodine from other sources - seafood, dairy, eggs, processed foods - that non-iodized table salt isn't likely to matter much.
I've used Himalayan salt for decades, no iodine deficiency. Unless you only eat at home, and no processed foods, you're likely getting plenty of iodine elsewhere.
Kind of a pedantic comment from you. The part of Pakistan they get that salt from is in the region of the Himalayas. Himalayas spans multiple countries and is a big region. So that person is not wrong, it is from the Himalayas.
> The three brands that did not contain microplastics are from Taiwan (refined sea salt), China (refined rock salt), and France (unrefined sea salt produced by solar evaporation)
There might be more info in the research paper linked in the article.
> unrefined sea salt produced by solar evaporation
Hmmm... that seems counterintuitive. I'd think that sea salt that's refined would contain less microplastic, not the other way around. Maybe they get their seawater from a part of the ocean that doesn't have microplastic?
Also, I'd think that Himalayan salt would contain no microplastic, but then again, it wouldn't surprise me if Himalayan salt wasn't actually from the Himalayas.
Maybe the testers happened upon some very old stock that has gone through the evaporation pits before the plastic revolution. That industry goes way back.
At least here in the UK you can get UK rock salt, which I'd expect to be free of microplastics - it's mined from under the ground where it's been sitting for aeons, so unless the processing introduces microplastics (seems unlikely) I'd expect it to be pure.
TFA indicates rock salt also contain microplastics.
If you're really paranoid, I'd suggest buying salt with sizeable crystals, and then rinse those in a saturated salt water bath. It seems to me these microplastics are not included in the salt grains, but rather dispersed among them. So they would float up.
You could also check for microplastics in the salt you usually buy. Just dissolve 100g in 10L of water, and filter that through a dark finely woven cloth.
In the case of sea salt, doesn’t the salt crystal form around a seed particle? The plastic particles are seeding the crystal, so do end up “inside” the grains.
