Hiti reported on a local story in Illinois in early 2022 that when freezing temperatures bring icy roads, experts say the best way to stop potentially deadly car accidents and pile ups is with de-icing salts containing sodium chloride, calcium chloride, and magnesium chloride. However, geoscientists and hydrogeologists have been saying for decades that salts may do more harm than good. A new review published in the journal Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment claims that using de-icing salts damages freshwater sources. [This impact has been known since the 1960s. More recently a review of a reported occurrence was published in 2017 in the journal of Geology and Geoscience.]
Geoscientists who worked on the former review looked at the hazards of using salt to make driving safer and found that the substances are contaminating streams and lakes while building up in wetlands. In their review, geoscientists continued saying, “there is also an urgent need to understand how freshwater organisms respond to novel chemical cocktails generated from road salt salinization.” These geoscientists conducting these review are not only looking at how the salt affects wildlife but also something that is important to humans, drinking water. In numerous cases, researchers reviewed scientific literature that found drinking water salinity levels outstrip federal thresholds a cause of de-icing salt contamination. But the issue goes beyond salinity as the salt also increases how much cadmium, lead, and radium is in the groundwater.
With brackish drinking water corroding plumbing, de-icing is linked to leaching of metals such as lead into water supplies like what has happened in Flint, Michigan. Although geoscientists know that there may be no end to the use of de-icing salts, however, they say that proper storage, mindful equipment calibration, and different methods of de-icing like pre-wetting roads or spraying salt brines before there’s ice on the ground can reduce the impact salt has on the environment. [The 2017 publication evaluated elevated chlorides (and other constituents) in the shallow groundwater along highways and rural roads and found that highway de-icing and poor operation & maintenances of rural water well softening systems and septic tank/leach-field systems also contributed to the shallow groundwater contamination used as drinking water in the subject area of Ohio].
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