Okay, has anybody seen these “salt lamps”?
http://www.innovapacific.com/ionsandsaltcrystal.htm
I’m not exactly dying to rush out and buy one, but I think they look kinda cool and I was wondering if they really do this “ionization” thing and if so, how? Anybody know the actual molecular mechanism and if it’s really beneficial (and how much) or is this some New Age Crystal Weirdness Scam?
Well, if you do buy one, just keep the deer and the cows out of your living room. Wouldn’t want 'em licking your investment away, now, would we?
Salt dust in the air picks up electrons from passing cats ? You end up with negative ions in the room and positively charged cats. Even the electric negative ion generators live on the thin edge of scientific respectability. Unless those are arclamps inside the salt crystals, you’re not going to get much ionization. Pretty lamps though.
I don’t think anyone has ever shown that ionized air is actually beneficial in any way.
I would be very surpised if those lamps actually produce many ions either. Salt certainly is not a requirement to highly ionized air.
When I see claims like
and…
I get skeptical. Real quick. I will say the lamps look kinda cool in a 70s lounge kinda way.
<checks their link page>
hmmm… We’ve got rebirthing, paranormal, Tarot andoracles, “light workers,” energy healing… yeah, I think we can safely put this one in the tin foil hat and ear candle category.
I want to know more about this part from the description of benefits.
I’m not sure why, but I find this phrase very funny. 
Hoo boy. If there were more positively charged particles in the air than elsewhere, then we’d have sparking. And getting your energy from the air? Lets see, if I set the calorimeter up with nothing in it but air, what do I get… nothing! Something must be wrong with this thing. :slaps it on the side:
Fishhead
Squink, I have no passing cats in my rooms. Nor ruminants, Dave. Will a rabbit do?
RhumRunner, you left out astrology, numerology and feng shui… I don’t know what a bioenergotherapist is, either. Do you think I can get a deal and have the tin foil hat thrown in if I order more than one lamp? Though I don’t think yoga, massage, meditation and dreams are all automatically a lot of hooey, so it may be a bit of a mixed bag. And I know there are such things as negative ions, I just don’t know much about ‘em.
And yeah, astro, I’d like to know where the 56% came from, besides right out of the air. Cellular respiration is the major source of ATP and it requires molecular oxygen, sure, but how do they figure that’s 56%? (Fishhead, you’ve set up your experiment wrong! Nothing but air? Ridiculous! Should be 56% air, 44% Oreos. Try again and get back to me.)
What I was trying to figure was what in heck kind of ions I was to imagine were filling my room. Scrolling down, I gather it’s negative oxygen ions. How does heating/lighting up salt (this is NaCl table-type salt, yes? 
) create them? In theory, anyway. I realize the answer may be “it doesn’t.” This page says
Uh… yeah. I will cut them some slack on “Natrium” since it may be a typo or a translation thing, but I still curl my lip and raise my eyebrow. Apparently they’re flogging chloride anions, not oxygen. But if salt is NaCl, how does the dissociation of the ionic bond create more negative than positive ions? You’ve got one of each, haven’t you? And what in heck are they supposed to be doing that’s so darn good for you? Also, if your lamp is dissociating like that, does it get smaller and smaller and eventually disappear?
Feh. I still think they’re cute and would maybe make a nice nightlight.
Well, a flame emits considerable UV and ions as well. If you put a candle inside, maybe these do create negative ions. (The salt could play a role, but maybe it’s the candle doing it.)
I don’t think there’s any way to create negative ions if you put a light bulb in the thing.
If you seriously want negative ions, don’t trust the new age crap stores. Build your own ion generator:
High-volume ion generator kit $60
http://www.ramseyelectronics.com/cgi-bin/commerce.exe?preadd=action&key=IG7
120VAC ion generator module $11
http://sales.goldmine-elec.com/prodinfo.asp?prodid=2713
I don’t seriously want negative ions, particularly, thanks anyway. I wouldn’t mind a cute, funky little lamp, though. I’m sorry, but the lamp is much cuter than the ion generators (especially the second one, which looks like it would attack you, given half the chance). I just wondered if negative ions came along wiv it (and how and why for I should want them at all).
I hate negative ions. They are always insulting my friends and putting me down.
Bastards.
IMO: Those lamps are rubbish for health improvements, but they look nice. I wouldn’t mind having one.
Did you ever wonder why the abbreviation for sodium is Na?
Salt lamps are cool. I don’t give a rat’s ass about any claimed “health benefits,” but they do shed a very nice light.
Nothing beats plopping a candle down in the lantern I made of a salt crystal and beeswaxed pine, turning off the lights and slipping into a nice warm tub with Mrs. Furd. Its a really nice way to spend time with someone you love. The lantern makes a nice, warm, orange, flickering light that just seems to go well with a romantic evening.
Maybe you could set up a giant Volta machine ()what are htey called?") and it sneds millions of volts and an thousand amperes across a hundred feooot space. Kill the bunnies!
hmmm…Sounds very beneficial to the health, if you ask me! 
Seems like positive ions would be better than negative. They just sound more, well, positive.
But really folks, salt ions disassociate in water. If you evaporate the water, the salt ions, both sodium and chloride, mostly stay in the water. And they can’t, for electrical reasons, go into the air at different rates without the water getting a charge on it. If it did get a charge on it, it would draw the opposite charge back out of the air to a degree, or in this case would keep more of the opposite charge from entering the air. So it just doesn’t work. It breaks the laws of physics. If somehow, you were to give the water a negative charge, you might force some of the chloride ions off. But you’d get a shock when you touched it, in the act bringing the solution back to neutral. Unless you kept adding current, in which case you’d get a hell of a shock.
And oxygen is not an energy source. One way of defining the amount of “energy” in something (from a biological viewpoint, not a physics viewpoint) is the number of calories in it. This is the amount of heat produced by binding oxygen to it. Oxygen doesn’t burn itself. It is not the source of the energy in our bodies, although it is necessary to the consumption of that energy.
From Dictionary.com
cal·o·rie Pronunciation Key (kl-r)
n.
Abbr. cal Any of several approximately equal units of heat, each measured as the quantity of heat required to raise the temperature of 1 gram of water by 1°C from a standard initial temperature, especially from 3.98°C, 14.5°C, or 19.5°C, at 1 atmosphere pressure. Also called gram calorie, small calorie.
Abbr. cal The unit of heat equal to 1/100 the quantity of heat required to raise the temperature of 1 gram of water from 0 to 100°C at 1 atmosphere pressure. Also called mean calorie.
Abbr. Cal The unit of heat equal to the amount of heat required to raise the temperature of 1 kilogram of water by 1°C at 1 atmosphere pressure. Also called kilocalorie, kilogram calorie, large calorie.
A unit of energy-producing potential equal to this amount of heat that is contained in food and released upon oxidation by the body. Also called nutritionist’s calorie.
Once again the Antecedent Police pull me over and issue me a ticket. Sorry to construct that so awkwardly, Fishhead. When I said “it requires molecular oxygen”, “it” meant “cellular respiration”. You are right (and I am aware) that oxygen is not burned for fuel in the body. I wasn’t trying to say that. I was reaching for some kind of understanding of what could possibly be meant by saying we receive our energy from air (much less hang a number on it). The only thing I could think of was the difference in output between aerobic and anaerobic metabolic pathways. Put one molecule of glucose through your system and substrate-based phosphorylation in glycolysis and your Krebs Cycle will reap you four molecules of ATP for doing biological work. You’ll get thirty-four additonal molecules of ATP out of that glucose through oxidative phosphorylation if oxygen is present. But yes, you need some fuel to oxidize. Which is why I facetiously suggested adding 44% Oreos to the jar of air.
It all sounds rather vague and unscientific to me, but I’m aware there’s lots of science I don’t know, so I asked. For myself, I am heavily favoring the Health Benefits of Romantic Bathing Hypothesis over the Health Benefits of Ions in the Air Hypothesis.
how do you make them? they look like a mix of wax and rock salt