Archive link. Salt pollution, including one of its largest single contributors, road salt, is harming ecosystems around the world. (The more and wider the roads, the more salt we use, and the...
Archive link. Salt pollution, including one of its largest single contributors, road salt, is harming ecosystems around the world. (The more and wider the roads, the more salt we use, and the harder it becomes for flora to thrive.) Industrial processes also involve a lot of salt. It seems that the heavy use of salt in everyday products has an impact, and I assume that improper dumping of very salty waste contributes significantly to the problem. The article vaguely claims that "agriculture, mining, [and] construction" cause increased salt levels in nearby areas, but doesn't elaborate.
I think this has been talked about for several years (decades?), or at least I remember reading about it years ago, but the issue has never gotten much public attention.
Human activities have altered this normal salt cycle in recent decades, the team found. Agriculture, mining, construction, water and road treatment, and additional industrial activities are increasing the salt in our ground, freshwater systems and air.
The big source in the United States may come as a surprise: road salt, which communities use for de-icing in the winter. From 2013 to 2017, road salt made up 44 percent of the country’s entire salt consumption.
Road salt can contaminate freshwater streams, but it can also enter pipes that deliver drinking water. Many of these pipes are made of metal such as lead or copper, elements that can be harmful for the environment or people. When large quantities of road salt flood into poorly protected pipes, it can push these metals into the water, Kaushal said.
In recent years, some areas including Washington have switched out road salt for a more-unusual sounding antidote — beet juice. A beet juice brine, which contains less salt, helps lower the freezing point of ice, sticks to roads more effectively and is better for the environment.
Salty pipes = corroded pipes. Corroded pipes = health issues and wasted money. No good. The article talks about Flint, MI. Not something we want to repeat.
Beet juice brine sounds like a nice alternative to straight-up road salt, but it still contains salt. It is not salt-free. Alternatives like this are cool, but don't address the root cause of the problem. Unlike industrial uses, road salt is intentionally put onto roads to melt ice. Like, that's the whole point, and the only point. So maybe we should minimize how much we have to use road salt/beet juice brine to begin with.
Obligatory mention that trains don't use salt to clear snow from their tracks. They physically remove the snow with rotary plows. Automobile roads have their purposes, but imagine if we stopped expanding highways and instead spent a portion of the $200 billion/yr we spend on highways in the US on... parallel rail transit? Just sayin'. You could move a heck of a lot more people (and freight) faster and in less physical space, and cut our salt use in half or more... seems like a win-win to me. Why have six-lane interstates when we could have two-lane ones with a train track adjacent?
The author doesn't really propose solutions to this problem more generally. It's pretty multifaceted so the approach is going to have to be different in every industry. I don't have enough industry-specific knowledge to make any specific proposals outside transportation. I imagine that addressing this issue in heavy industry requires federal regulations about unnecessary salt use in chemical products, which is totally out of my wheelhouse.
I agree with you that more trains and less emphasis on road infrastructure is the best way forward for a myriad of reasons, but I think tying that to the road salt issue is a bit silly -- road...
I agree with you that more trains and less emphasis on road infrastructure is the best way forward for a myriad of reasons, but I think tying that to the road salt issue is a bit silly -- road salt will remain an issue even if car transit becomes less dominant. You don't need six-lane intersections to need to de-ice roads. De-icing roads is going to be a necessity to some extent as long as there are any roads in climates where the roads get bad in winter, which is a huge swath of the US and most of Canada. Finding better alternatives that damage the environment less is going to be important no matter how well we do at replacing cars with other forms of transit.
tl;dr I'm 10000% for more train less road, but it's pretty tangential to the road salt problem.
Yes, I pointed this out. It's not all or nothing and it's definitely not tangential. Road salt is directly correlated to the amount of surface area that has to be salted. It's 1:1. If we stop...
road salt will remain an issue even if car transit becomes less dominant. You don't need six-lane intersections to need to de-ice roads
Yes, I pointed this out. It's not all or nothing and it's definitely not tangential. Road salt is directly correlated to the amount of surface area that has to be salted. It's 1:1. If we stop expanding highways, we don't need to increase our use of salt. If we induce a modal shift to rail, we can actually remove lanes from roadways, reducing our need to salt that much roadway and saving that much money on unnecessary maintenance.
If 44% of salt is used on roads, it is totally plausible to cut that in half in many areas by having narrower roads.
I’ve never been to USA or Canada, or anywhere that’s regularly snowy or icy in winter… but I’ve visited the alps where most vehicles use tyre chains to avoid slipping. Why isn’t that an option in...
I’ve never been to USA or Canada, or anywhere that’s regularly snowy or icy in winter… but I’ve visited the alps where most vehicles use tyre chains to avoid slipping. Why isn’t that an option in Canada/USA winters, and why is road salt even needed? And is road salt also prevalent in Europe or is it a particularly americas-centric problem?
Tire chains exist in the US. In places like Colorado, commercial vehicles can actually be fined for not using tire chains in icy conditions. Road salt is used anyway because not everyone...
Tire chains exist in the US. In places like Colorado, commercial vehicles can actually be fined for not using tire chains in icy conditions. Road salt is used anyway because not everyone necessarily uses tire chains and because, even with tire chains, non-icy roads are safer than icy roads.
Road salt is used all over the world, including in Europe. The US is particularly bad about it (there's an area of the country called the "salt belt" for this reason), but it's not only used here. In the US, the problem is partially just the sheer quantity and width of roadways. With that said, I believe that road salt is not effective at extremely cold temperatures. Northern states plow snow in addition to icing.
I don't think anyone has bothered to rigorously monitor road salt use by country in a standardized way, so I don't know what the actual usage rates are in the US vs. Europe. The International Molybdenum Association (??) has some data on deicing products by country and claims that European use is similar to North American use, presumably on a per-road-mile basis and not in absolute terms.
Tire chains, especially on heavier vehicles, will fuck up your standard American road which is already bad enough as it is. Salting roads is cheaper than repairing them and this is America we're...
Tire chains, especially on heavier vehicles, will fuck up your standard American road which is already bad enough as it is. Salting roads is cheaper than repairing them and this is America we're taking about so environmental impacts be damned.
In flatter states chains and studs aren't allowed because they wear the roads down too quickly. Many of those places already have bad roads and no money to fix them.
In flatter states chains and studs aren't allowed because they wear the roads down too quickly. Many of those places already have bad roads and no money to fix them.
Chains are also a thing many people use in the winters in mountainous areas where it gets very bad, but they are afaik generally considered a temporary measure. You have to drive slow while using...
Chains are also a thing many people use in the winters in mountainous areas where it gets very bad, but they are afaik generally considered a temporary measure. You have to drive slow while using snow chains, and they damage roads, so they're usually limited to particularly dangerous mountainous areas rather than everyday commutes. A more common solution in cities and suburbs with bad winters is snow tires, but these are generally used alongside salting the roads.
They use road salt in Europe as well (at least here in Germany -- here they usually mix it with gravel to give cars more traction) but winters are harsher in North America at much lower latitudes (I think because Europe benefits from the Gulf Stream). Where I grew up in Ohio was at roughly the same latitude as Florence, but its winter weather was more like Oslo.
That page starts off implying they're the main solution, but by the end:
Rotary plows
That page starts off implying they're the main solution, but by the end:
Rotary snowplows are expensive because of their high maintenance costs, which the railroad incurs regardless of whether they are needed in a given year. As a result, most railroads have eliminated their rotaries, preferring to use a variety of types of fixed-blade plows that have significantly lower maintenance costs, in conjunction with bulldozers, which can be used year-round on maintenance-of-way projects. In addition, because rotaries leave an open-cut in the snowbank that fixed-blade plows cannot push snow past, once rotaries have been used, they must be used for all further significant snowfalls until the snowpack has melted. Since rotaries, which need some form of fuel to power the blades, also cost more to operate than fixed-blade plows, they are now generally considered to be a tool of last resort for the railroads that own them.
The few remaining rotary plows in North America are either owned by museum railroads or are kept in reserve for areas with poor road access and routine severe snowfall conditions. The largest remaining fleet of rotaries consists of Union Pacific Railroad's six plows reserved for Donner Pass. Japan sees widespread use of rotary snowplows in its many mountain passes.
Good comment! I wasn't actually sure what the industry uptake was of rotary/wedge plows, I just knew that they primarily used a mechanical rather than chemical system. It seems like the expense of...
Good comment! I wasn't actually sure what the industry uptake was of rotary/wedge plows, I just knew that they primarily used a mechanical rather than chemical system.
It seems like the expense of rotary plows is mostly related to their power consumption, especially for diesel trains. I wonder what the difference is in electric locomotives, as they're much more efficient.
I didn't realize road salt was still so heavily used. Even Duluth, MN, has been trying out alternative for a long time (nobody wants Lake Superior to become a salty lake). Now I'm wondering if the...
I didn't realize road salt was still so heavily used. Even Duluth, MN, has been trying out alternative for a long time (nobody wants Lake Superior to become a salty lake).
Now I'm wondering if the usage isn't higher in rural areas. They have less tax money to spend on fancy salt alternatives and a lot of roads to clear.
One more reason to support that climate change is fundamentally a demand-side problem, not a supply-side one. It's an unreliable heuristic to say we can innovate our way out of everything. With a...
One more reason to support that climate change is fundamentally a demand-side problem, not a supply-side one. It's an unreliable heuristic to say we can innovate our way out of everything. With a bit of foresight and planning, we should be able to reduce resource consumption with minimal negative, and potentially even some positive, effect on quality of life.
Archive link. Salt pollution, including one of its largest single contributors, road salt, is harming ecosystems around the world. (The more and wider the roads, the more salt we use, and the harder it becomes for flora to thrive.) Industrial processes also involve a lot of salt. It seems that the heavy use of salt in everyday products has an impact, and I assume that improper dumping of very salty waste contributes significantly to the problem. The article vaguely claims that "agriculture, mining, [and] construction" cause increased salt levels in nearby areas, but doesn't elaborate.
I think this has been talked about for several years (decades?), or at least I remember reading about it years ago, but the issue has never gotten much public attention.
Salty pipes = corroded pipes. Corroded pipes = health issues and wasted money. No good. The article talks about Flint, MI. Not something we want to repeat.
Beet juice brine sounds like a nice alternative to straight-up road salt, but it still contains salt. It is not salt-free. Alternatives like this are cool, but don't address the root cause of the problem. Unlike industrial uses, road salt is intentionally put onto roads to melt ice. Like, that's the whole point, and the only point. So maybe we should minimize how much we have to use road salt/beet juice brine to begin with.
Obligatory mention that trains don't use salt to clear snow from their tracks. They physically remove the snow with rotary plows. Automobile roads have their purposes, but imagine if we stopped expanding highways and instead spent a portion of the $200 billion/yr we spend on highways in the US on... parallel rail transit? Just sayin'. You could move a heck of a lot more people (and freight) faster and in less physical space, and cut our salt use in half or more... seems like a win-win to me. Why have six-lane interstates when we could have two-lane ones with a train track adjacent?
The author doesn't really propose solutions to this problem more generally. It's pretty multifaceted so the approach is going to have to be different in every industry. I don't have enough industry-specific knowledge to make any specific proposals outside transportation. I imagine that addressing this issue in heavy industry requires federal regulations about unnecessary salt use in chemical products, which is totally out of my wheelhouse.
I agree with you that more trains and less emphasis on road infrastructure is the best way forward for a myriad of reasons, but I think tying that to the road salt issue is a bit silly -- road salt will remain an issue even if car transit becomes less dominant. You don't need six-lane intersections to need to de-ice roads. De-icing roads is going to be a necessity to some extent as long as there are any roads in climates where the roads get bad in winter, which is a huge swath of the US and most of Canada. Finding better alternatives that damage the environment less is going to be important no matter how well we do at replacing cars with other forms of transit.
tl;dr I'm 10000% for more train less road, but it's pretty tangential to the road salt problem.
Yes, I pointed this out. It's not all or nothing and it's definitely not tangential. Road salt is directly correlated to the amount of surface area that has to be salted. It's 1:1. If we stop expanding highways, we don't need to increase our use of salt. If we induce a modal shift to rail, we can actually remove lanes from roadways, reducing our need to salt that much roadway and saving that much money on unnecessary maintenance.
If 44% of salt is used on roads, it is totally plausible to cut that in half in many areas by having narrower roads.
I’ve never been to USA or Canada, or anywhere that’s regularly snowy or icy in winter… but I’ve visited the alps where most vehicles use tyre chains to avoid slipping. Why isn’t that an option in Canada/USA winters, and why is road salt even needed? And is road salt also prevalent in Europe or is it a particularly americas-centric problem?
Tire chains exist in the US. In places like Colorado, commercial vehicles can actually be fined for not using tire chains in icy conditions. Road salt is used anyway because not everyone necessarily uses tire chains and because, even with tire chains, non-icy roads are safer than icy roads.
Road salt is used all over the world, including in Europe. The US is particularly bad about it (there's an area of the country called the "salt belt" for this reason), but it's not only used here. In the US, the problem is partially just the sheer quantity and width of roadways. With that said, I believe that road salt is not effective at extremely cold temperatures. Northern states plow snow in addition to icing.
I don't think anyone has bothered to rigorously monitor road salt use by country in a standardized way, so I don't know what the actual usage rates are in the US vs. Europe. The International Molybdenum Association (??) has some data on deicing products by country and claims that European use is similar to North American use, presumably on a per-road-mile basis and not in absolute terms.
Tire chains, especially on heavier vehicles, will fuck up your standard American road which is already bad enough as it is. Salting roads is cheaper than repairing them and this is America we're taking about so environmental impacts be damned.
In flatter states chains and studs aren't allowed because they wear the roads down too quickly. Many of those places already have bad roads and no money to fix them.
Chains are also a thing many people use in the winters in mountainous areas where it gets very bad, but they are afaik generally considered a temporary measure. You have to drive slow while using snow chains, and they damage roads, so they're usually limited to particularly dangerous mountainous areas rather than everyday commutes. A more common solution in cities and suburbs with bad winters is snow tires, but these are generally used alongside salting the roads.
They use road salt in Europe as well (at least here in Germany -- here they usually mix it with gravel to give cars more traction) but winters are harsher in North America at much lower latitudes (I think because Europe benefits from the Gulf Stream). Where I grew up in Ohio was at roughly the same latitude as Florence, but its winter weather was more like Oslo.
That page starts off implying they're the main solution, but by the end:
Good comment! I wasn't actually sure what the industry uptake was of rotary/wedge plows, I just knew that they primarily used a mechanical rather than chemical system.
It seems like the expense of rotary plows is mostly related to their power consumption, especially for diesel trains. I wonder what the difference is in electric locomotives, as they're much more efficient.
I didn't realize road salt was still so heavily used. Even Duluth, MN, has been trying out alternative for a long time (nobody wants Lake Superior to become a salty lake).
Now I'm wondering if the usage isn't higher in rural areas. They have less tax money to spend on fancy salt alternatives and a lot of roads to clear.
One more reason to support that climate change is fundamentally a demand-side problem, not a supply-side one. It's an unreliable heuristic to say we can innovate our way out of everything. With a bit of foresight and planning, we should be able to reduce resource consumption with minimal negative, and potentially even some positive, effect on quality of life.