Salt Panic  (謠鹽)

Although experts have already informed the public via the Internet that the iodine contained in salt will not help them resist radiation, and the salt stock is far more than enough for residents to consume, the panic still spread to almost all the regions in southeast China. Some netizens then created many quips to jeer at the phenomenon. Now, the salt panic has passed, but the lessons learned from the panic still deserve to be thoroughly considered.From March 15 to 20, a salt panic took place in some regions in Chinese mainland. During that time, rush buying by worried shoppers emptied supermarket shelves in Zhejiang, Guangdong, Jiangxi, Guizhou, Sichuan, Jiangsu and Hubei provinces as well as the municipalities of Beijing, Shanghai and Chongqing. Customers rushed to supermarkets to buy packs of iodized salt, as they believe the iodine contained in the salt would help prevent nuclear radiation incurred after the March 11 9.0 magnitude earthquake in Japan. Also, they believed that nuclear radiation from Japan would contaminate future supplies of sea salt.

? Salt hoarding panic in China

? Authorities try to dilute salt-buying panic