Halite

Halite's toughness is poor due to its perfect cleavage and soft internal structure, making it prone to breaking and chipping in daily use.

Halite's susceptibility to water-based solutions and heat exposure makes it less ideal for daily use where these factors are common.

Halite dominantly occurs within sedimentary rocks where it has formed from the evaporation of seawater or salty lake water. Vast beds of sedimentary evaporite minerals, including halite, can result from the drying up of enclosed lakes, and restricted seas. Such salt beds may be hundreds of meters thick and underlie broad areas. Halite occurs at the surface today in playas in regions where evaporation exceeds precipitation such as in the salt flats of Badwater Basin in Death Valley National Park. In the United States and Canada extensive underground beds extend from the Appalachian basin of western New York through parts of Ontario and under much of the Michigan Basin. Other deposits are in Ohio, Kansas, New Mexico, Nova Scotia and Saskatchewan. The Khewra salt mine is a massive deposit of halite near Islamabad, Pakistan. Salt domes are vertical diapirs or pipe-like masses of salt that have been essentially "squeezed up" from underlying salt beds by mobilization due to the weight of overlying rock. Salt domes contain anhydrite, gypsum, and native sulfur, in addition to halite and sylvite. They are common along the Gulf coasts of Texas and Louisiana and are often associated with petroleum deposits. Germany, Spain, the Netherlands, Denmark, Romania and Iran also have salt domes. Salt glaciers exist in arid Iran where the salt has broken through the surface at high elevation and flows downhill. In all of these cases, halite is said to be behaving in the manner of a rheid. Unusual, purple, fibrous vein filling halite is found in France and a few other localities. Halite crystals termed hopper crystals appear to be "skeletons" of the typical cubes, with the edges present and stairstep depressions on, or rather in, each crystal face. In a rapidly crystallizing environment, the edges of the cubes simply grow faster than the centers. Halite crystals form very quickly in some rapidly evaporating lakes resulting in modern artifacts with a coating or encrustation of halite crystals. Halite flowers are rare stalactites of curling fibers of halite that are found in certain arid caves of Australia's Nullarbor Plain. Halite stalactites and encrustations are also reported in the Quincy native copper mine of Hancock, Michigan.

Halite is also commonly known as table salt, and it is one of the few minerals regularly eaten by humans. Aside from seasoning food, it is also used to prevent roads from freezing during cold and icy weather. Halite is also an important ore for sodium and chlorine.

The world's largest underground salt mine is the Sifto Salt Mine. It produces over 7 million tons of rock salt per year using the room and pillar mining method. It is located half a kilometre under Lake Huron in Ontario, Canada. In the United Kingdom there are three mines; the largest of these is at Winsford in Cheshire, producing, on average, one million tonnes of salt per year.

The name halite is derived from the Ancient Greek word for salt, ἅλς (háls).

Halite is believed to help a person overcome anxiety and improve self-esteem. It is believed that the stone helps to clear the mind, bringing contentment to decision making and empowering confidence in the choices made. When dissolved in a bath it is believed to cleanse the aura and restore energy.