As the weather got colder, the team honed its focus on the Road Salt Project. The team needs to create a visual model of how salting our roads creates substantially affects salt levels in our waterways. So far, the team is designing a concrete mini-road with a swale on each side. The swale will flow into a simulated river and ground water to show how the salt level peaks throughout the process. What the team is struggling with is how to create a variable of a solution. One idea is to show how different materials affect the salt lever, salt vs dirt, or to show how cleaning the salt through various methods reduces the level of salt in the river water and ground water. We want to make the Project as simple as possible so that all ages can interact with it, yet still convey the information of how important this issue is. Ideally, we would like to make an interactive Project that participants can touch and ‘mess around with’. We know that we learn better when we get our hands dirty and can actively learn a subject instead of passively absorb information. The Northfield, VT environmental presentation gave us a great example of this hands on learning technique. The team would love to be able to create a road-based salt observation project like this one.
But to better understand and create a well rounded project, we believe reviewing the history of road salt is necessary:
The history of using salt on roads starts in New Hampshire in 1938. Road crews started using salt, sodium chloride, on an experimental basis and by a few years later, 5,000 tons of salt was spread over roadways nationwide (compared to the 10-20 million tons of salt used on roadways used currently). Because of this rapid change in the amount of salt being used, our environment is quickly becoming saltier, not only impacting our biodiversity but also our drinking water. Americans are famous for having too must sodium in our foods. This is a health concern for many of us however, its hazard increases when not only the food has sodium in it but also the water. A restricted sodium diet could restrict sodium intake to around 1,000 to 3,000 mg per day. However, wells have been tested with sodium concentrations of 347 mg/L in New York. This means that is a person drinks 2 L of water per day, they would be ingesting around 700 mg of sodium just from water. This would have a huge impact on anyone trying to reduce their sodium intake.