Howcome when you spill salt in your eyes it hurts but when you cry it doesen't?

Question

just wondering because tears are salty and plus i had this on my mind for a long time just wanted to know why??

Answer 1

Too  much at one time.. The body can usually take what it produces. But spilling salt  in the eye is an overload.

Answer 2

because tears aren't consetrated salt.

Answer 3

Salty water is smooth. Tiny little rocks? Not so much.

Answer 4

Because when you spill salt in your eyes it's not a natural thing, it's a "threat" to you because it irritates your eyes. Tears contain normal body salt that's not hurting your eyes because it's not NaCl-crystals made for cooking.

Answer 5

it hurts when i cry!! but i haven't tried putting salt in my eyes i think the type on saltiness in tears isn't the regular cooking salt. so you wouldnt really know.

Answer 6

Because your tears are less salty.  Ocean water will also make your eyes sting because the concentration of salt is much higher than tears.  Pure salt will not only irritate because of the sodium content but also because of the crystalline structure of the salt scratching the surface of your eye.

Answer 7

Two reasons:

1. Saline is way, way less concentrated than table salt.

2. Table salt is iodized, and iodine burns like a mother.

Answer 8

because what is in your body, and refined by your body, is different from what is foreign to your body.

Answer 9

Because your tears have a particular concentration of salt in them - known as an "isotonic solution" or a solution that has the same concentration of salts as the other tissues it surrounds.

Anything more salty will be irritating, and the same applies to less salty solutions - such as plain water.  The salts or fluids in you eyeball's cells will want to migrate when exposed to solutions with higher or lower salt content - hence the discomfort.

Answer 10

idiot?

Answer 11

there's more salt when you pour it in. in your tears it's watered down

Answer 12

tears are from the sodium in your body, which your eyes are already used to and table salt is from the sea and by the time we buy salt it is iodized. Which means it is treated with iodine which for sure will burn your eyes.

Answer 13

Please tell me, you or someone you know didn't put salt in your / their eye.

Answer 14

because when you spill salt in your eyes.you increase the concentrations outside. Then your eye would be pressured into reducing the amount of liquid by osmosis in the eyeball to balance the salinity of the eye.

Pressure is the deprivation of the pain....

And of coarse pain nerves are present everywhere in your body.

Answer 15

There is very little salt in tears, and it's also diluted, so the other liquids would wash it away.

Answer 16

Because tears are not straight, concentrated salt.

Answer 17

Just in case that you might still be somewhat confused by the answers you have gotten (some of them *absolutely asinine*), I would 'beg' to submit my answer to your question; to wit:

The fluid that your body produces to 'flood your eyes' -- for whatever reason -- is *neutral* in "acidity or alkilinity" to try to return you eyes to *nearly normal* as possible operation.