water-salt-lead.md

Background

This article asserts that consuming Himalyan salt, which clocks in with lead content at 100 ppb, is incredibly dangerous. The supplied evidence is that water with lead content of 5 ppb is declared unsafe, so obviously the salt must be unsafe as well.

Here are some calculations:

Salt:

• The FDA recommends consuming no more than 2300 mg per day, but many sites cite them as saying 3400. People like salt; let's use the higher number!
  • 3400mg per day
• Molecular weight of NaCl: 58.44 g/mol
• molecules consumed per day: (3400 mg / 58.44 g/mol) * (6.02214179 * 10^23)
  • = 3.5036417 * 10^22 molecules of NaCl
• At 100 ppb, that implies (3.5036417 * 10^22) * (100/10^9) molecules of lead consumed per day, or:
  • = 3.5036417 * 10^15 molecules of Pb

Water:

• Recommended daily value: 2L (not even counting what one cooks with!)
  • = 2kg
• Molecular weight H20:
  • 18.01528 g/mol
• Molecules per day: (2000 kg / 18.01528 g/mol) * (6.02214179 * 10^23)
  • = 6.68559333 * 10^28 molecules of H20
• At 5 ppb, that implies (6.68559333 * 10^28) * (5/10^9) molecules of lead consumed per day.
  • = 3.34279666 * 10^20 molecules of Pb

Conclusion

Assuming I didn't make any errors in my calculations, we can draw this conclusion:

Humans consuming recommended amounts of tainted water (5 ppb lead) will absorb 95,409 times more lead than those consuming recommended amounts of tainted salt (100 ppb lead). The water is overwhelmingly more dangerous.

Himalayan salt may well be dangerous, but not because of this argument.