Road salt is a great way to reduce winter road accidents however, it is creating serious problems within our environment, specifically on our aquatic ecosystem. Low amounts of salt introduced to an ecosystem have negligible effects, however, when roads are pounded with salt year after year, it adds up (it is estimated that America uses 20 million tons of sodium chloride on our roadways each year, about 137 pounds of salt for every American). A huge concern with high salt levels in water ways is the creation on biologically dead zones. When salt mixes with mater, it can form salt concentrated pockets which tend to form at the bottom of lakes because salt affects water’s density and prevents oxygen from reaching the bottom layers of water. These dead zones wreak havoc on an ecosystem and, as the name implies, kills everything in it. Moreover, when salt enters fresh bodies of water, it can disrupt the ability for organisms to regulate how fluid passes through their bodies via messing up how they regulate the intake of salt. Even for wildlife, salting roads are dangerous. Road salt can attach wildlife and lead them to their death on a busy road. Excess levels of salt are more harmful for water based organisms however even for us, water utilities frequently report complaints during winter months of salty drinking water. The salt put on roads is not just normal table salt, it is much coarser. These salts and deicers lower the freezing point of water by adding ions. This salt dissolves very quickly on roads and almost all of it ends up in waterways downstream, by either being dissolved in melt water or aerial dispersion from cars flinging the salt and spraying it off the road. Once the salt is in the waterways, it is difficult and expensive to remove. This problem is only getting worse as America becomes more and more urbanized. Researches found that the Mohawk River in Upstate New York’s sodium and chloride levels drastically grew from 130% increase to 243% increase between 1952 and 1998.
