Salzman was born in 1935 in New York City and raised in Manhattan and Queens..[2][3]: 28 She completed a BA at Cornell University in 1956.
[2][4] In the early 1960s, Salzman began community organizing with her husband Eric Salzman against gentrification in Brooklyn Heights as a founder of the North Brooklyn Heights Community Group,[5] and in the late 1960s, as a founder of the group Citizens for Local Democracy.
[3]: 28 [6] In 1970, she attended the first public meeting of Friends of the Earth U.S., became a volunteer in 1972, and in 1975 became employed as the first representative for the Mid-Atlantic region.
[3]: 28 During this time, she began to focus on issues related to nuclear power, and in 1975, participated in a campaign that successfully stopped the transportation of radioactive waste through New York City in 1976.
[3]: 28 She worked with FOE staffer Pamela Lippe on local campaigns opposing nuclear power in New Hampshire, Long Island[7] and Montague, Massachusetts, corresponded with scientists in the nuclear physics field, and wrote to the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists[3]: 25, 28–29 and The New York Times.