Yet without salt we do not have chlorine and without chlorine we do not have purified drinking water, not to mention a panoply of life-saving drugs. Without salt there would be no microchips or solar panels, since you cannot turn metallurgical silicon into super-pure polysilicon without the hydrogen chloride we electrolyse from salt. Without salt we would not have glass (since the soda-ash fluxes we use to melt sand are mostly obtained from salt) and without glass civilisation as we know it would break down. There would no vials in which to transport drugs, no lenses through which to see or to
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