What is it?
A purple-black element that turns straight from solid to vapour, extracted from ancient nitrate deposits and from oilfield brine.
Why does it matter?
Iodised salt prevented a global cause of preventable brain damage; iodine is also in X-ray contrast media and in polarising film for every LCD screen.
Deeper written sections for this material have not been published yet. Everything below is drawn straight from the source datasets and is complete.
Who produces it
See it on a map →Mine production
Mine productionmetric tons 2025 (estimated) World total 34,000 metric tons
USGS Mineral Commodity Summaries 2026 · Reported as elemental iodine content. · source ↗
Scroll the table sideways for the remaining columns.
| Country | Production | Share of world |
|---|---|---|
| Chile | 23,000 | 67.6% |
| Japan | 9,000 | 26.5% |
| Turkmenistan | 800.0 | 2.4% |
| Iran | 700.0 | 2.1% |
| Azerbaijan | 210.0 | 0.6% |
| Indonesia | 50.00 | 0.1% |
| Russia | 8.00 | 0.0% |
| United States | Withheld | — |
| World total | 34,000 | 100% |
“Withheld” means the USGS suppressed the figure to avoid disclosing an individual company's data — it does not mean zero. Country rows do not always sum to the world total because the source rounds each figure independently and does not always break out an “other countries” line.
Who holds the reserves
Reserves
Reservesmetric tons 2025
USGS Mineral Commodity Summaries 2026 · source ↗
| Country | Reserves | Share of world |
|---|---|---|
| Japan | 4,900,000 | 77.8% |
| Chile | 750,000 | 11.9% |
| United States | 250,000 | 4.0% |
| Azerbaijan | 170,000 | 2.7% |
| Russia | 120,000 | 1.9% |
| Turkmenistan | 70,000 | 1.1% |
| Iran | 40,000 | 0.6% |
| Indonesia | Not applicable | — |
| World total | >6,300,000 | 100% |
The source publishes this world total as a bound rather than a point figure, so the shares in the last column are themselves bounds.
Price
crude iodine, average unit value of imports (cost, insurance, and freight), dollars per kilogram
Annual averagedollars per kilogram
Basis: crude iodine, average unit value of imports (cost, insurance, and freight), dollars per kilogram. Annual averages as published in USGS Mineral Commodity Summaries 2026 · source ↗. These are reference annual averages, not a live market quote.