Thursday, October 04, 2012

Why Iodine is Added to Salt

Why Iodine is Added to Salt.

Iodine first began being added to salt commercially in the United States in 1924 by the Morton Salt Company at the request of the government. This was done as a response to the fact that there were certain regions in the U.S., such as around the Great Lakes and in the Pacific Northwest, where people weren’t getting enough iodine in their diets due to it not being pre
valent in the soil in those regions. Among other problems, this caused many people to develop goiters (swelling of the thyroid gland, also sometimes spelled “goitre”).
About 90% of people who develop a goiter do so because of a lack of iodine in their diets, so the simple solution was to add iodine to something pretty much everyone consumes fairly regularly, namely salt.

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