Turning to beet juice and beer to address road salt danger
Source: Associated Press
Turning to beet juice and beer to address road salt danger
By MICHAEL CASEY
28 minutes ago
CONCORD, N.H. (AP) — Experts who fear road salt is starting to take a toll on the nation’s waterways are turning to beet juice, molasses, and even beer or cheese waste to make them safer.
Tossed onto sidewalks and dumped onto highways, salt for decades has provided the cheapest and most effective way to cut down on traffic accidents and pedestrian falls during winter storms.
But researchers cite mounting evidence that those tons of sodium chloride crystals — more than 20 million nationwide each year — are increasing the salinity of hundreds of lakes, especially in the Northeast and Midwest. That’s putting everything from fish and frogs to microscopic zooplankton at risk.
“There has been a sense of alarm on the impacts of road salt on organisms and ecosystems,” said Victoria Kelly, a road salt expert at the Cary Institute of Ecosystem Studies in New York. “We’ve seen increasing concentrations in river water, lakes, streams. Then, scientists started asking the question: What is going to happen to the organisms living in freshwater bodies and what will happen to the freshwater bodies as a whole?”
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Read more: https://apnews.com/bb34e41bb95a4dfa85301621ec0c50ca/Turning-to-beet-juice-and-beer-to-address-road-salt-danger
