Tasty, Explosive Sodium

12Aug,2024

Tasty, Explosive Sodium

BY : Rhiannon Nevinczenko

If you heard about a chemical that is so dangerously volatile that it explodes when it touches water, and then saw its name in an ingredient list on a product, how would you feel about that product?

Sodium is a metal that reacts violently when put in contact with water. The human body is approximately 60% water. Yet, there is likely a salt shaker in your cabinet (and you've likely never caught fire from eating potato chips).

The human brain naturally wants everything to be simple - black and white, good and bad. Nuance is often experienced as inconvenience. It feels so much easier, for example, to skip the academics and jump straight to sodium = explosive metal = bad, or that chlorine = poisonous gas = bad, or that chemicals = unnatural = bad.

Thing is, everything is a chemical. Chemicals are substances with defined compositions. "Chemical" may as well be a more-formal or more-sciencey way of saying "stuff." Sodium chloride, the chemical name for table salt, may sound intimidating compared with its common name, but it's still just table salt.

Sodium (Na) is a soft metal that burns in air and reacts violently in water. Chlorine (Cl) is a corrosive, poisonous gas. Sodium chloride (NaCl) is a mineral salt that provides the body with necessary electrolytes. How is it that two dangerous elements, when combined (don't try this at home, by the way), become harmless, even medically necessary?

Sodium chloride is a salt. Salts are ionic compounds. The constituent ions (some positively charged, some negatively charged) are held together by, you guessed it, ionic bonds. Together, they form crystalline structures. (Have you ever looked closely at a table salt granule?) Most salts, including NaCl, are water soluble. That is, they dissolve in water.

So you've got Na atoms and Cl atoms. Together, for some reason, their dangers are neutralized. Why do they not become dangerous again when dissolved in water? The answers are in the ionic bond that holds sodium chloride together.

When NaCl dissolves in water, it dissolves into Na+ cations and Cl- anions. The ionic bond that holds sodium chloride together occurs as Na "wants" to lose its unstable valence electron, and Cl "wants" to gain an electron to become stable. It is that "desire" to lose and the "desire" to gain an electron that makes each element dangerous. When NaCl dissolves in water (polar molecules), it does not become neutral Na and neutral Cl. The Na+ and Cl- ions are safe because the electron donation has already occurred. Elements are defined by their number of protons, not the number of neutrons or electrons. That is why electron loss and gain do not change sodium or chloride's elemental species (though they do change their behavior).

In fact, Na+ ions are extremely important for biological functions (hence the popularity of electrolyte beverages)! Electrolytes are necessary minerals that can carry an electric charge when dissolved in body fluids (e.g., blood, sweat). Your body uses sodium, as well as other electrolyte salts, for a range of functions, such as fluid balance (urine production, blood volume), absorbing nutrients, electrical signaling, and muscle contraction.

So, no, consuming sodium (as Na+ ions or NaCl) will not make you explode. (Though a single cell could burst in a hypotonic solution, but that's a story for another time!) But of course, you already knew that - and now, you understand why!

Photo credit: Marek Kupiec via Pexels.

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