Far more than 101 uses for salt are well known. The figure often cited by the modern salt industry is 14,000, including the manufacturing of pharmaceuticals, the melting of ice from winter roads, fertilizing agricultural fields, making soap, softening water, and dying textiles. Salt is a chemical term for a substance produced by the reaction of an acid with a base. When sodium, an unstable metal that can suddenly burst into flame, reacts with a deadly poisonous gas known as chlorine, it becomes the staple food sodium chloride, NaCl, from the only family of rocks eaten by humans.
