[7] Salt poisoning typically results in a feeling of confusion and jitteriness; more severe intoxication can cause seizures and coma.

[citation needed] Early on, the intoxicant will cause a strong feeling of thirst, followed by weakness, nausea, and loss of appetite.

The human renal system actively regulates sodium chloride in the blood within a very narrow range around 9 g/L (0.9% by weight).

Eventually the blood's sodium concentration rises to toxic levels, removing water from cells and interfering with nerve conduction, ultimately producing a fatal seizure and cardiac arrhythmia.

Some historians have suggested that the mysterious sicknesses afflicting the early English colonists at Jamestown, Virginia (1607–1610) – which nearly extinguished the settlement – reflect sea water poisoning.

The settlers arrived in the spring, when the James River water was relatively fresh, but by summer a drought of historical magnitude had rendered it much more brackish.