Salt and Spores

[Philomath she/her]

It’s been a while since I’ve been o the forums, so maybe I missed this discussion already. But my 10-year old just started listening to Tress and pointed something out that I hadn’t considered. He just got to the part where she almost blows up her face with zephyr spores. The book explicitly says it reacted with a drop of sweat. He paused and said, “That shouldn’t work. There’s salt in sweat.” I burst out laughing. Are there any WoBs about this? I’m still perfectly willing to suspend disbelief for this to work and be fun. But also he’s got a point. 

[Treamayne]

1 hour ago, Philomath said:

It’s been a while since I’ve been o the forums, so maybe I missed this discussion already. But my 10-year old just started listening to Tress and pointed something out that I hadn’t considered. He just got to the part where she almost blows up her face with zephyr spores. The book explicitly says it reacted with a drop of sweat. He paused and said, “That shouldn’t work. There’s salt in sweat.” I burst out laughing. Are there any WoBs about this? I’m still perfectly willing to suspend disbelief for this to work and be fun. But also he’s got a point. 

No WoBs that I can find, but the "salt" in sweat is mostly inflated by urban legend (possibly because people associate a salty taste to sweat). Assuming, of course, that the reason that Salt kills Aether Spores is because of it's dehydrating properties (Wikipedia) :

Spoiler

Sweat is mostly water. A microfluidic model of the eccrine sweat gland provides details on what solutes partition into sweat, their mechanisms of partitioning, and their fluidic transport to the skin surface.^[25] Dissolved in the water are trace amounts of minerals, lactic acid, and urea. Although the mineral content varies, some measured concentrations are: sodium (0.9 gram/liter), potassium (0.2 g/L), calcium (0.015 g/L), and magnesium (0.0013 g/L).^[26]

Relative to the plasma and extracellular fluid, the concentration of Na⁺ ions is much lower in sweat (~40 mM in sweat versus ~150 mM in plasma and extracellular fluid). Initially, within eccrine glands sweat has a high concentration of Na⁺ ions. In the sweat ducts, the Na⁺ ions are re-absorbed into tissue by epithelial sodium channels (ENaC) that are located on the apical membrane of epithelial cells that form the duct (see Fig. 9 of the reference).^[2]

So, sweat does have a very small concentration of sodium (Na), but little to no actual Sodium Chloride (NaCl), and most eccrine salts are reabsorbed before the moisture is excreted by the sweat glands. At those concentrations, I would imagine that the moisture a Spore received from the sweat is far greater than the moisture it loses through salt contact.

Hope that helps

[Philomath she/her]

@Treamayne Thanks for sharing your knowledge. That is super cool! My son thought it was cool too.