A thing to note there is that there are plenty of other contaminants possible (and found in studies) in brands of pink salt (basically all pink salt is branded Himalayan salt), at much higher concentrations than sea salt, including lead. It also has no added iodine, which depending on your diet and region and such may be a concern.

yep. the exact same thing. i get to buy them in huge 5 Kg rocks because its just a few hundred km away but that is the reason.

Honestly that's kinda cool. And I refuse to imagine anything but a melon sized hunk 'o salt on the dinner table, with a small hammer and chisel for those who want to salt their meal.

I think if you keep the salt exposed at the atmosphere, you'll quickly run into the problem of it absorbing a lot of water.

Quite. I learned this the hard way when I moved to a place with a swamp cooler. My salt lamp started weeping brine and salt sludge onto my side table.

nah. we arent those kinds of brutes. we simply buy a big hunk, every other month on a sunday spend time with a hammer and break it down to small pieces. then use a food processor to powder it