How much iodine is in your salt?

Reading the great fountain of knowledge wikipedia. Turns out that depending on your geopolitical background you have different levels of iodine in your salt. North American / USA have 46 - 77 parts per million (ppm) but for other countries that have a UK influence it is only 10 - 22 ppm. Silly me for thinking that there would be common standards for this basic supplementation. At worse case the US standard could contain nearly 8 times the UK. This means you would need to eat 8 times more salt to get the same iodine dose. In some ways it doesn't affect me as our supplement contains iodine. I also make sure that our kids multi has iodine in it as well.

While we are on the subject of iodine, there is a little known fact that iodine consumption in Australia and NZ dropped in the 80's. This was due to the shift from iodine based disinfectants/cleaners to other chemicals in the milking industry. After milking the milking plant is washed. This washing leaves a residual, that is washed off by the next milking. So when the cleaners were iodine based it resulting in milk being a good source of iodine. Thus with NZ and Australian high intake of dairy products we have a healthy intake of iodine. When these cleaners were phased out (for reasons I do not know) this source of iodine was removed from the diet.

Photo reference.