Health Impact News Editor Comments
Ever since the days I started my own food company emphasizing truly clean and healthy foods, I was skeptical of the new market emerging in the early 2000s for “sea salt.” While it is reasonable to expect that such salts contained a better mineral profile than processed salts, our seas are tremendously polluted.
We opted instead to offer our customers himalayan salt, harvested from ice glaciers in the Himalayan mountain ranges far away from most polluted sources.
Now, a new report published by Malaysian researchers, microplastics were found in most of the commercial sea salts they tested.
Sullied seasoning: Sea salts come with a dash of microplastics
Excerpts:
The amount of microplastics in the salts was so low that they pose no health risk—even if the only salt you ever eat is sea salt and you eat a lot of it. However, the flavored pollution is still worth keeping an eye on, the researchers argue.
We’re only increasing our use of plastics, they note, which “might lead to the gradual accumulation of [microplastics] in the oceans and lakes and, therefore, in products from the aquatic environments. This should necessitate the regular quantification and characterization of [microplastics] in various sea products.”
Read the full article at Ars Technica.
DISCLAIMER: Brian Shilhavy is the editor of Health Impact News and the founder of Healthy Traditions.
Join the Discussion