How Canada’s addiction to road salt is ruining everything

[Anonymous]

It seems road salt is not cheaper in the long run.

This winter, Calgary has expanded its use of beet juice as a de-icing alternative to road salt. While slightly more expensive than salt, the mixture is more efficient, less toxic and less corrosive.



Nevertheless, despite a galaxy of relatively benign de-icing agents such as beet juice, this year cities across Canada will stubbornly continue to coat their roads with literal mountains of salt. Although salt remains the single cheapest way to keep snow and ice at bay, the economics make much less sense when considering the awesome scale of the damage wrought every year by the salt truck.



Below is a repost of an article that first ran in January, 2017. Since it was originally published, road salt has dissolved hundreds of kilograms of automotive steel, chapped untold numbers of dog's paws and done at least $5 billion damage to Canadian infrastructure.



It's doing billions of dollars in damage to cars



In 2015, the U.S. National Highway Traffic Safety Administration pegged salt corrosion as the culprit in thousands of vehicle brake failures. That same year, Transport Canada issued a recall of 3,000 BMWs and Minis that had been parked at the Port of Halifax during the 2015 ice storm. But it wasn't the ice that caused the recall; salt de-icing had damaged the vehicles so badly that they couldn't steer properly. Way back in 1975, Transport Canada estimated that de-icing salts were causing $200 in damage per car, per year — the equivalent of $854 in 2017. Corrosion-resistant coatings have improved in the interim, but even when one-quarter that amount is applied to the roughly 14 million registered vehicles in Ontario and Quebec, the result is an extra $3 billion in vehicle depreciation each year.



t's ravaging our bridges and highways



Crews are already at work on a $4.2-billion replacement for Montreal's Champlain Bridge. The original, built in 1962, was brought to the edge of collapse in only 50 years because of salt corrosion. Salt brine seeping into concrete dramatically speeds up the corrosion of rebar within — and is heavily responsible for the poor state of bridges and highway overpasses across central Canada. Salt was a key contributor to the deadly 2006 collapse of the De La Concorde bridge in Laval, killing six people. The heavy salt diet on Toronto's Gardiner Expressway is also one of the main reasons the elevated highway is often raining chunks of concrete; as rebar corrodes, the concrete around it crumbles. Tellingly, a series of 1930s-era stone carvings around Toronto's Air Canada Centre have been permanently ruined by salty runoff from the nearby expressway.



It's not just roads



After the Algo Centre Mall in Ontario's Elliot Lake collapsed in 2012, killing two people, forensic analysts said the building's steel supports looked like they had spent decades marinating in sea water. There were structural problems, to be sure, but the building was also hammered by 30 years of salty runoff from a rooftop parking garage. Road salt was also a contributing factor to lead contamination of drinking water in Flint, Mich. Water from the Flint River — made extra salty by road salt runoff — was eating into old pipes, dosing the population with lead. In 2011, well before the Flint disaster, Michigan's Mackinac Center for Public Policy pegged the total damage done by road salt as high as $687 CDN per tonne. In Minnesota, damage estimates ranged between $1000 CDN and $5000 CDN per tonne. Canada uses at least seven million tonnes of salt per year, according to 2009 estimates by Environment Canada. Using the Mackinac Center estimate, that's $4.8 billion in damage per year — $1 billion more than the $3.6 billion damage caused by the Fort McMurray wildfire.



There's a bunch of small, annoying problems, too



Dalhousie University estimated that it costs it an extra $15,000 in cleaning and maintenance each year just to repair all the damage salt does to floors and baseboards — with similar costs presumably accruing to most of Canada's other universities, museums and public buildings. Salt severely corrodes leather, reducing the lifespan of Canadian shoes and requiring extra cleaning. And wading through salt is brutal on dogs' paws: Every winter brings a new wave of chapped paw cases to Canadian vets.

https://www.msn.com/en-ca/news/canada/how-canada%E2%80%99s-addiction-to-road-salt-is-ruining-everything/ar-AAv1Iuo?li=AAggNb9&ocid=mailsignout">https://www.msn.com/en-ca/news/canada/h ... ailsignout">https://www.msn.com/en-ca/news/canada/how-canada%E2%80%99s-addiction-to-road-salt-is-ruining-everything/ar-AAv1Iuo?li=AAggNb9&ocid=mailsignout

[Bricktop]

It amazes me when I visit the UK how fast their cars deteriorate. My Honda S2000 is 19 years old and looks as it did the day it was bought. In the UK, even 5 year old cars look aged. Apparently this is all down to the salt put on icy roads. Our climate is much more benign to cars than the Northern Hemisphere, it seems.



The only issue is the sun will kill your paint and interior if you don't use suncreens and wax once a year if you don't store in a garage.

[Anonymous]

It amazes me when I visit the UK how fast their cars deteriorate. My Honda S2000 is 19 years old and looks as it did the day it was bought. In the UK, even 5 year old cars look aged. Apparently this is all down to the salt put on icy roads. Our climate is much more benign to cars than the Northern Hemisphere, it seems.



The only issue is the sun will kill your paint and interior if you don't use suncreens and wax once a year if you don't store in a garage.

Everyone knows road salt rusts cars, but I didn't know how harmful it is to bridges and so on.

[Bricktop]

The salt is dissipated all over the place. Road signs, road markings, fences...its a corrosive substance.

[Anonymous]

Salt is corrosive. Don't dump so much of it on our roads in the winter.

[Odinson]

The salting of the roads stopped in lapland because there is no use doing it..



The roads are gonna freeze anyway and the salt attracts reindeers..

[Anonymous]

The salting of the roads stopped in lapland because there is no use doing it..



The roads are gonna freeze anyway and the salt attracts reindeers..

It's the same in Canada with large mammals.

[Bricktop]

Large mammals? Pshaw...



Its a sobering moment when you negotiate a bend only to see one of THESE bad boys standing in the middle of the road.



https://images.duckduckgo.com/iu/?u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.kinghamsafaris.com%2Fwp-content%2Fuploads%2F2017%2F11%2Fbuff-IMG_sm-80.jpg&f=1">



You're both about to have a bad day.

[Anonymous]

The Northern tip of my province has wood bison.

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[Anonymous]

I work a steady run to Kenora, Ontario and back. Ontario uses a lot of salt on their highways.

[Bricktop]

The Northern tip of my province has wood bison.

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Pretty much the same...water buffalo...



"They range in weight from 300–550 kg (660–1,210 lb), but weights of over 1,000 kg (2,200 lb) have also been observed."

[Anonymous]

Were they introduced from South East Asia.

[cc]

It amazes me when I visit the UK how fast their cars deteriorate. My Honda S2000 is 19 years old and looks as it did the day it was bought. In the UK, even 5 year old cars look aged. Apparently this is all down to the salt put on icy roads. Our climate is much more benign to cars than the Northern Hemisphere, it seems.



The only issue is the sun will kill your paint and interior if you don't use suncreens and wax once a year if you don't store in a garage.

True enough. Benign is not hemisphere, its latitude  .... . we enjoyed the same relief in Florida and Cali and Fils when lived there ... but does need sun protection as you mentioned

Sun will eat good leather if not protected and covered

[Bricktop]

Were they introduced from South East Asia.

Yes, Indonesia.



But they have actually "evolved" slightly with stock from other countries, so they are slightly distinct from other varieties in subtle and unimportant ways.



In the 80's they were everywhere in the tropical north and had to be culled. Now they are back to their highest ever population, around 150,000. One of the few animals in Australia permitted to be hunted for sport.

[Blazor]

I hate the road salt!



I try to spray off under my Jeep the best I can after a few days, but this liquid stuff they using gets everywhere.



It also makes it harder to see out of your windows when it gets all over it.



I was just wondering last week, what were the environmental repercussions from this stuff, the runoff. Didnt think about the pipes and stuff.