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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 11 ก.ค. 2024
- We use road salt to melt ice after a snowstorm, but is it bad for the environment?
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Read More:
How America got addicted to road salt - and why it’s a problem
www.vox.com/2015/1/13/7531833/...
“The US economy doesn't grind to a halt every time there's a snowstorm. And a big reason for that is the more than 15 million tons of salt we dump on our highways, roads, and sidewalks each winter to melt away the snow and ice.”
Road Salts & Alternatives
water.greenventure.ca/road-sal...
“With more than five million tonnes of road salts used in Canada each year, we all know the damage they can do: they eat the metal in our cars, corrode body work and brake lines, contaminate roadside streams where we fish, and damage concrete bridges and parking garages.”
Communities seek a substitute for road salt
www.usatoday.com/story/news/na...
“From sugarcane molasses to beet juice, local governments look for alternatives.”
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Switch from salt to pepper. Giant pepper grinder trucks will drive around.
Grind grind. “Would you like a little more?” Grind grind.
I've been an automotive tech up in The Great White North for over 25 years and the cost of maintenance is far more tha body panels on the cars and trucks. It is the car as a whole, the frame, fuel lines, brake lines, power steering lines,fuel tanks, oil pans, exhaust and even the wiring and computers. The list really does impact almost the entire car. Salt is evil and in some cases deadly or at least causes injury. I have seen far to many accidents caused by a driver hitting the brakes only for the rotten brake line to explode and the car not stop. Salts gotta go,period. Anything would be better than salt.
My sister had brake failure from salt damage she did not wreck because she was lucky and it happened somewhere safe
What’s the alternative?
Anything better than road salt huh? Ok let's sprinkle Plutonium dust on the roads to keep them warm
Ok i am confused why this is such a hard solution to solve. In Alaska they dont use any kind of salt at all because it attracts moose and no one wants that... They use Gravel... It's simple and no magical beat juice required...
If it has worked for a State that is covered in snow for over half the year why is it not being looked at for a common sensical answer...
Originally posted by DreadlockDrummer : "where live they don't put salt on the roads. instead they use gravel......... so instead of rusting everyones vehicles they just cause a million fucking rock chips and make it so you have to replace your windshield once a year...... and no the insurance companies here don't insure for rock chip damage because they know it's guarenteed to happen every time"
***** I lived there for 3 years and only had to spend money for a wind shield crack once and that was during summer when a random rock came flying out of a construction tucks tire... It had nothing to do with the gravel from winter...
I don't expect those who didn't live there to understand... The gravel doesn't get kicked up because it gets pushed into the snow which adds traction...
Now i live in on an island where salt is as abundant as the gravel was in alaska... I have a lot more damage from the salt in one year than i did from the gravel in the three years i was there... Thinking about it since i got my truck from Alaska the truck spent more years in Alaska than i did and the only think i would have actually ever needed to do was maybe a new paint job...
Cloud Twirl I know that gravel doesn't fly all around, when I go to my homestead I go through ~15 km of gravel roads so I understand...
***** it's far different from driving down a Gravel road... because there is snow involved
Cloud Twirl But I drive in the winter too
In Scandinavia we use gravel or sand and it works great, we also use winter tires with little metal dots.
And we also use big amounts of salt...
TheWoodfinger Compared to the Us the amount is tiny and they dont use winter tires.
We use salt alongside sand though
we do the same in alaska. it looks bad to have patches of gravel dust where the snow was after winter though. btw by dots, i think you mean studs.
Exactly, it works perfectly!
Road salt is one of the wort things i have ever tasted.
5 years later:
Still using salt
my whole fucking fenders are rusted because of that shit they put on ice and snow !!!
We should all just get flamethrowers and melt the snow with them.
To much air pollution but nice joke
@@harkiran1789 they could be powered with hydrogen
Yeah, here in eastern Europe road workers also use salt to melt snow and ice and it sucks for one reason - the cars just can't handle it. My friend has a 10 year old car and the bottom of it is all rusted and there even are some holes although he tries to wash his car as often as possible to get rid of salt traces. We need something less metal hungry
try getting it oil sprayed and your friend wouldnt have that problem. sorry but maintaining a car takes a little more then just driving it.
Yea i have 17 years old car and has every year been used quite much speicaly during winter time . the rust is starting now to show. but many people i know have alot younger cars(2009+) than me but the rust in them is similar even worse on many. and i have snow at least 5months a year which is heavy salted
speical Japanese car made in europe are quite bad for rust.
mixing with ash+alchol(made from fruit waste)?
austin dorotea he had the bottom of his car covered in some kind of special tar or smth :D but still it got through it, guess just a shity car, but still..
Niklez7 yeah I personally drive a 1999 Vw golf mk4 at the same conditions and have zero to none problems, maybe just a few little dots near the bottom of the doors, and my friend has 2005 Mazda 3 and it's just terrible,as I mentioned there literally are holes on the bottom.. So yeah, Japanese cars suck ass at this kind of situation..
Robert Paulson lol yea i have exaclty golf made in Wolfsburg. only 1998 model. i mean its rough car as long you dont mess with the electric part in it.
that car has been on very limited bugdet since i got it from former owners which were also students.
> high as shit
> decides to click on this first before new Sourcefed
> Matt starts talking
> mind blown
Thanks for the video. I am from Yakutia in Russia and here we use only sand at some intersections because our winter is dry and cold and the ice never melts in winter so the ice is actually sticky similar to an ice cube you take out of the freezer. When I was in Canada I was surprised of the amount of salt people use. It makes roads, cars and shoes dirty and it damage them. Also it is bad for the paws of pets and the rivers. I think it is more to the drivers to adapt their drivings in winter.
In some parts in Sweden they mix sand with hot water, this will make the sand freeze on the road and not being blown of by passing cars
i live in Australia, it gets so hot here the road melts tyres :)
Use transparent PV (when we get some) to cover the roads like a long greenhouse with no walls. Prevents the road getting wet, could be heated like a car window to stop snow settling, would reduce traffic noise, could be tinted to reduce glare, would produce more power than it consumes on the heating in the winter and a huge amount in the summer. Should more than pay for it's self.
Guess we gonna have to use sugar instead.
I did an essay on this and I found the best option was actually a salt solution, preferably recycling one like the cheese brine product they talked about, in addition to something for traction like salt or sand. Ashes would work really well too if they do give traction because they're just wood or other things, not a foreign object that would cause harm to plants.
What about giving everyone a set of snow chains or include being able to go around some kind of skid pan mandatory in order to to get a drivingslicens?
Here in the pacific northwest, we just use gravel. Plenty to go around, why is this not a solution?
Cracked windshields.
@@gregmaloney4691 I’d rather have a cracked windshield than have a shitload of salt causing rust on my truck
@@hansmyers7495 I hear you. My guess is you would prefer to have neither! Swiss are using brine coated wood chips... th-cam.com/video/7J7fEsxZALA/w-d-xo.html
That intro was awesome! Loved it :)
In Canada or least in Alberta we use a gravel/ sand mixture, works just fine... In the states I believe they use salt because no buys winter tires for their cars, which makes sense, you guys get random snow storms, where as in Canada we get 6 months of winter
Here in the ND they use some weird juice but contains salt. Since it gets real cold here. They say that you don't have to wash your car until it starts to warm up to prevent rust.
I live in Michigan and we salt the hell out of our roads especially in Northern Michigan and the Upper Peninsula. I wish we followed states like Alaska that use sand and gravel.
Solar panel roads that heat the roads and store energy.
horrible idea
Solar panels are slippery when wet.
i always wondered if road salt was detrimental to streams, i just kind of always figured the amount of precipitation that it would require to dissolve the salt would dilute it to a safe amount. Which in most areas it probably is. But you did mention urban areas, if anything should be changed it should be in major cities, or at least those specific cities where the levels were deemed unsafe.
I was just thinking about this problem the other day….thanks for the info
I can imagine this being a problem for us in Idaho. We are a desert state yet our city capital is called the city of trees. We get all of our water from snow since we are in the mountains. If we use salt and salt gets into the rivers which there are a lot rivers here, It could be a major problem I didn't even think about.
My car is all wheel drive and I have zero problems getting around in 2 to 6 inches of snow. I have noticed the salt causes as many problems as it solves. The salt melts the snow during the day but then everything refreezes at night. If you think snow is bad, just try driving on ice!
That's how people die.
How about people learn to drive?? I live in Wyoming, with some of the worst winter roads. It's not that hard, just don't push your vehicle past its limits.
Ice is bad tho
It also hurts your dogs paws when you walk them outside Dx I hate it
Get them some little socks or booties!! Sounds silly, but they could definitely benefit from the added protection. You just have to get them accustomed to it.
Snow tires can only do so much. We get such heavy winters in Pennsylvania, that without regular plowing and salting, we'd never get anywhere. (I once tried to drive to work during a snow storm, with top of the line winter tires and only going about ten mph, and my car still spun out and got stuck in a ditch. Fortunately, I was less than a mile from my home, so I could walk back, but I had to wait all day for enough of the snow to get plowed away so I could get my car back.)
So which ones of those alternatives melt snow and ice as well as snow?
How about changing tires in the winter to winter-tires?
theres a town a few over form mine that just dumps a whole beach worth of sand down and calls it a day and goes back out in a week lol
Would hempcrete roads have some kind of anti-ice properties?
How about simply mandating the use of winter tires in the winter?
Walter Black that is only going to do so much
I say we run heat wires under the general tire tread area on the road that can be toggled for winter, so we can literally just melt the snow in that one line.
I never realised salt was such a big problem. Good to know things like that. Thank you for the information DNews. As much as I laughed at "Is The Moon a Star?" video I must admit that you don't always treat us like complete idiots, more often than not you are quite informative.
Anything causing known harm to private property by governments and corporations is so ethically wrong. How disgusting.
my communnity hasnt used salt for years. wa have always put down sand.
In my opinion(obviously)... Over population is the biggest problem we face, and if we had that under control, most of our problems would dissappear.
Go Wisconsin! Cheese is always the awnser!
I live in Banff National Park in Canada. In the park we cannot use road salt as we would elsewhere due to its negative effects. Instead we use gravel, or at least that's what it looks like.
I grew up in the great white north of Québec at a time when salt wasn't used; it was sand instead. And I'd happily go back to sand.
Where are they even getting this salt from?
Where I live, in Central Oregon, they use volcanic cinders on the roads, and it seems to work pretty well. Nice to know it's better for the environment too!
After the volcanoes went off 1991 Alaska, they swept the roads, saved the ash and spread it back on the roads. Come spring all that volcanic Ash dust was back in the air. Very hard on air intake for autos and humans. Causes a ton of health issues. So not a viable resource. They do spray a liquid chemical that only works down to about 15°F. But after that the roads are pretty dry, until next snow/melt cycle.
Sand/Gravel is pretty common here in Minnesota.
1 word... Hovercars
david t omg I was thinking the same thing let's make cars hover
Have an underneath heating system for main roads, which would be turn on during snow storms. That would take a huge load off of salt/plowing overall.
How about using spiked tires?
What about the solar panel roads that I've heard about? They heat up using a heating element and generate electricity when not using it to thaw themselves.
great explanations and no scientific terms involved. Thank you, it helped me a lot
in the netherlands they developed roads with solar panels in them which have all sorts of benefits like creating lots of electricity to power the roadlights, heat up the road to just above freezing so the road wouldn't freeze over and stuff like that, it's the road of the future :)
How about the smart road project? It can heat the roads from underneath. As well as light up when there danger/caution needed. It also I great way to upgrade our infrastructure and get our selfs on par with other countries.
What people in other countries use instead of salt?
Do we benefit by using sand and ash in conjunction?
I saw these solar panel roads things on Facebook that have built in lights, heating and pressure sensors which would solve quite a few road problems. I'm not entirely sure if they actually exist but they seem cool...
Meat tenderizers. smashing the ice into fragments increasing surface area. Of course they could also refreeze, but because of the new texture, it should have some traction now, right?
to the people suggesting the use of gravel and sand, in the north east, snow is very wet and very heavy. it doesnt snow here, it just rains slush. it's like driving on bacon grease. i rememer one year, my county tried using sand in place of salt. it didn't work out, and the county had to get salt trucks rerouted from neighboring counties.
DNews a big while ago you guys reported on something called INTELIGENT ROADS or something like that. diferent materials, pipe lines and electricity lines running underneath the roads with LED's to mark the lines on the roads and so on. yes it will turn into a MASIVE infrastructure change but its a change you only have to do once. or the other option is change into self repairing concrete... its been in develop for a while and its market ready ( hope so ).
You are probably thinking of Solar Roadways :)
you are right man... thats the one the name escape my mind glad you remind me... n_n
wait what? DNews fell for the scam too? ...hmm I might need to investigate any claims they make myself before reporting them to my friends if that's the case. So many dead giveaways, such as "using solar power at night".
im preatty sure they say about that in their video... but the theory is actualy not bad... the actual prototype can have some mistakes that can improve but overall is a very good solution.
There are actually an innumerable things that make it truly impossible without a "magic material", even if money wasn't an issue. Chief among them is the fact that in order for solar to work, the protective surface needs to be transparent, and in order to be transparent, it needs to not be getting scratched. Then, you can't sit the protective layer directly on top of the solar panels, or you will crush them, as a small, empty car is about 2 tons (getting lighter with electric and hybrid cars, but still, solar panels are not made to be crushed). You could alleviate the problem a bit by having pillars placed at set intervals, but this still makes the solar roads much more unstable than regular ones, unless you sacrifice a huge amount of coverage - at which point, why the fuck don't you just build over it instead of under?! Not to mention, when a shadow is cast over an series of solar panels, it shuts down the whole series. Guess what happens when a car drives over it? Sure you could put it so they are never in a series, and instead be in parallel, but then you are focusing the watts into (either volts or amps, I forget which...considering I build solar panels as a hobby, I should probably know..), which does run into issues. Ideally, you want to have an equal distribution.
You get more power from being a ceiling to a road than actually being on the blasted road for many, many reasons - fewer massive shadows, not having to conserve space for pillars, don't need the protective material to be as thick, because it doesn't need to not crack under multiple tons of cars (or, god forbid, a semi).
Oh, we didn't even discuss the problem with lighting the roads. Absolutely damned impossible, at least on the scale that these people claimed. In order for you to see the light clearly (as you want to do for road markers), the light cast must be BRIGHTER than the light around it. Meaning, just talking elementary physics, even assuming you could absorb 100% of the light energy and redirect 100% of it into the LEDs, or whatever, then you are still going to need a large deal more area collecting light than the area you are casting - and you also reduce the area you are collecting by the area you are casting because LEDs tend to not be transparent (otherwise, their light would not be focused outward, but I guess it would be possible). And this doesn't even consider the whole idea of radiant and reflected light which never contacts the roads, but would still interfere with lighting (light running horizontal to the ground -which is often caused by reflection - would interfere, but not provide energy).
depending on how much it would cost to mass produce, coating roads with super hydrophibic sprays like ultra ever dry may work... no more slippery roads.. no more rust.. etc
Teach people to actually drive! That's my easy solution. I love driving on snowpack.
Grind up people and lay the roads with their remains.
Killing one stone with two birds, I like your thinking
new bff
Salt shortage? Seriously? Where was that quote sourced from?
+Chris Watts Every northeastern state last winter.
No wonder every american is so salty about everything.
WackyTurtle that's......... not funny
22 million tons of road salt? dafq thats way too much i dont believe that.
What about Epsom salt (Magnesium chloride)? Too expensive?
Why not use all of them?
I live in Wyoming and we get LOTS of nasty snow and nasty winters and our state only uses sand. It works well during the day but at night it doesn't have to sun so it doesn't melt the ice well at night. But I still prefer sand over salt.
i think the last one, that vucanic ash is pretty good way to fix this problem
Matt, send me your mixtape man
The obvious solution is flying cars equipped with an advanced sensor suit and automated cross-communication network that keeps all such vehicles aware of each others locations and prevents any collisions from happening.
Salt shortage??? Where you get this from
I live in Canada, and we don't use salt; only sand. I've never had a problem with it and don't see why it couldn't be used in the US as well.
In canada we use gravel and sand. Studded tires also work.
good ol' DNews! bringing attention to a real sciencey AND newsworthy topic which you probably won't get from mainstream news. also, nice job with the rhyming -- it was insightful!
Couldn't they add some type of coil that gets hot and melts the snow, keep the road at like 70 degrees so it doesn't freeze over
A salt shortage might help the USA's health issues.
This video is misleading.
1.) They tend to use sand out west. Or at least they did the last time I drove through Montana, SD, Idaho and some of Washington. So it isn't that everyone is using salt.
2.) Cars are coated with a zinc compound that is highly resistant to corrosion from salt and some other sources. While bridges and roads are affected, cars these days suffer very few ill effects from it.
3.) As far as salt getting into the environment, it isn't quite as bad as it sounds. A good deal of the salt used in cited ends up in the sewage system where it can be treated. More rural areas are more likely to see it get into natural water ways but they tend to use less salt as they have far less traffic.
Ultimately I agree with what this video was trying to say, but I don't think being this misleading is helpful to anyone.
As a current resident of Montreal, I have a bit of experience when it comes to a shit load of snow. Over here, the solution is mostly sand+rocks, and let me tell you, if you think salt corrosion for your car, try sand blasting it, and think about the pedestrians, they'll be treading through a slushy mixture of sand, ice, and rocks.
iIm Canadian and as long as i remember we've mostly been using sand. I don't know what America has against sand but it certainly works here.
It works everywhere... Amuwricanz are just 5tuP1d0.
Pea gravel, it doesn't stop the ice but it gives you an abrasive surface on top of the ice to have traction in. And it is not corrosive to cars
Special tires that are like sandpaper so there is more traction (only use when snowy so grains don't get destroyed for no reason
Traction is nice but you absolutely have to get rid of the ice on the highways at the very least... the other alternatives sound promising for in town though.
Crazy idea how about warming the road? It's expensive to warm up roads all over though with conventional methods but if someone can do an alternative solution with less waste then do it.
Recently, an engineer couple invented solar-powered roadways that self-heats in the winter. Unfortunately, it's probably way too expensive to use for the time being.
Isn't sand the best and cheapest option. Why not go with that, plus, correct me if I'm wrong but I don't think there are no additional negative enronmental effects that it causes.
How to fix salt problem:
Put all salt back in ocean
What are they doing in Europe?
In germany there is so much money taxed for road maintenance we could simply cover every road with 6 layers of 5€ notes..
Sand and ash sound perfect... Gravel is expensive, ash requires burning something (maybe garbage) and in the right spot you could have sand very readily.
And Solar Fricken' Roadways! =D
How about heating the Roads so snow and ice can't form , underground pipes that can heat the road
up in alberta we use gravel after each storm
We don't get much snow or ice on the roads in my area in north Texas... but when we do they use sand on the roads
16-19 hundred.
Does this mean 16 hundred to 19 hundred? Nope lol it means 16 to 19 hundred LOLOLOL
Huge studded snow tires for everyone. Keeping snow will also reflect more sunlight back so we could cool down.
Being a trucker...my life and livelihood depend on safe roads. I need to put food on the table. Whatever makes my job safer is not only MY friend but the economy's friend.....meaning EVERYONES friend
Trucker Josh VLOGS Whatever makes your job safer? So you'd be alright with the government chopping up prisoners and scattering their body parts on the roads if it melted the snow and gave the roads traction?
Hurricanes are good for the economy and are not everyone's friend.
Then lobby against road salt. Road salt destroys the roads them selves and eats away at your vehicle making them less safe.
Screw you. I don’t think anybody wants a rusty vehicle. Ban salt. I’d honestly rather drive on ice then salt
How self-centered and myopic of you!
Kitty litter is only expensive when it's, well, kitty litter. It's markup is insane. The clay itself is extremely cheap.
First... Do like us canadians and use winter tires! Drop the 4 seasons!!! Oh, and come to Quebec city to properly learn how to drive in a real winter. Oh and you can sleep in our ice castle too! Check it out!
I would be curious to hear the Canadian figures on salt use...
Here in canada we use gravel (small rocks) and sand