Over-seasoned: Our Taste for Salt Is Killing Our Freshwater Ecosystems

The American palate has developed a taste for salt, not only in our diets—to the detriment of our blood pressure—but also, in standard consumeristic fashion, in a cornucopia of markets that promise to make our lives easier. We soften our household water with salt, coat our crop fields and pastures with salt-laced fertilizers and compost, and deice our roads, bridges and parking lots with rock salt and brine. The widespread and intense use of salt is now threatening our streams and rivers, marshes and ponds, and even groundwater—freshwater resources that were never meant to be so salty.