Salt

Salt: A World History, by Mark Kurlansky. Walker & Company. 484 pages. $28. Do we really know about salt? There it sits rather meekly on the dining table sharing a position with pepper. We reach for it to make our food taste better, even though we're cautioned against it, and some of us have recently found new respect for its pure form: fleur de sel. Perhaps some our sketchy memory of history might bring up the salt wars, or even Gandhi's salt marches. From earliest recorded history, salt was at the center of the world economy.

Sports medicine doctors used to recommend that athletes take salt tablets because they thought athletes would sweat so much they would develop a salt deficiency and pass out or even die. Today, doctors don't routinely recommend salt tablets.In the early 1960s, there was a very good distance runner named Tom Osler. He was a mediocre runner in the winter but won several national championships in races in hot weather. He attributed his extraordinary ability to race well in the heat to severely restricting salt in his diet.

As yet another winter storm bore down on the mid-Atlantic states yesterday, Carroll highway officials said they were running out of road salt.Several municipalities and Carroll County Public Schools also faced shortages because they depend upon the county for their salt supply."

The lower Susquehanna River has been as much as 13 times saltier than normal, prompting a health alert urging some residents of the Havre de Grace area whose drinking water comes from the river to use bottled water instead.The low water level in the normally freshwater Susquehanna, resulting from drought conditions, is causing salt water from the Chesapeake Bay to back up into the river.That, Havre de Grace officials say, is leading to unusually high levels of salt in the drinking water of the old riverfront town and surrounding communities.

Despite two days of work by highway crews, Baltimore County's main local feeder roads remained treacherous and ice-clogged yesterday, giving motorists and police fits.Even the heavily traveled streets next to police and fire headquarters and the county courthouse in central Towson were reduced to skid zones as the local government struggled to supply itself with salt and sand and keep its diesel trucks running.In fact, the 300 county workers using 160 salt trucks completely ran out of salt yesterday.

Community leaders fear that a planned salt-storage barn at a prominent Towson corner will mar the appearance of a major entrance to the business district -- and is a misuse of prime property.They also question why the county bypassed its own review board, which recommended that the barn not be put at York Road and Bosley Avenue. The panel called the location "incompatible" with the neighborhood."The county ignored its own advisory panel," said Wayne Skinner, planning board member. "The issue is the general appearance of the whole area."

Put a bunch of 4-year-olds in a room and place two childhood favorites in front of them: salted pretzels and M&Ms. Then tell them to help themselves - and get out of the way. What they choose may have a lot to do with how much they weighed when they were born. It also may shed some light on the risk factors for hypertension later in life. Curious about the links between low birth weight and future risks for heart disease, and between salt and hypertension, researchers began a study to see whether some children are born liking salt more than other children.

It's time to put our fear of salt in the proper perspective.The USDA recommendation that all Americans cut back on salt is again under fire. This time I hope the blow will be fatal.If you're surprised to hear this from a nutritionist, you probably don't know that many experts question the benefit of low-salt diets for healthy people. In fact, the subject has been debated for years, long before the recent report that people who eat the most salt live longer than people who eat the least.Yet "hold the salt" has remained the prevailing message, in spite of the fact that an estimated two-thirds of the population is not prone to hypertension caused by salt sensitivity.

Joshua G. Harvey, who owned a salt company in Baltimore, died March 11 of cancer at a hospital in Naples, Fla. He was 83.Harvey, who also had a home in Baltimore, retired in 1970 as owner of the Harvey Salt Co.The Baltimore native was a 1929 graduate of the McDonogh School.He is survived by his wife, the former Marian Zouck; two daughters, Eleanor H. Egerton and Marian H. Edelen, both of Ruxton; a sister, Anne H. Trimble of Hagerstown; a brother, Nicholas D. N. Harvey of Delray, Fla.; nine grandchildren; and a great-granddaughter.

Here in America, we tend to think of Swedish bands as being lightweight and upbeat, all sweetness and froth like ABBA, Roxette or Ace of Base. But Salt is nothing like that. Instead of pretty pop confections, this Stockholm-based trio offers edgy, astringent songs flavored with alterna-rock anomie and punk abandon -- hardly the stuff of lightweights."Bluster," the title tune from their debut EP, recalls the raw exuberance of the Pixies with its soaring chorus and whining, over-amped guitar, but that's just one side of the band's sound.