Liquid Road De-icer - Is it safe?

Walking home today I spotted a truck spraying the entire road with liquid de-icer (it's now snowing here in the northeast U.S.).



Just before this I stopped to rest near a river and watched a few ducks diving for food. My brain connected these two things and I had to ask myself, "Are the ingredients in that deicer safe for the environment?" Sooner or later the melting snow, or a heavy rain, is going to wash all that deicer into the sewers that drain into the rivers, and eventually into the ocean.

I did a search for the ingredients of deicer, and so far I've only come up with a site that guarantees that deicers are environmentally friendly without listing the chemicals in them.

And then I hit upon this site: How to protect your pets from road salt and deicer

Though this article doesn't say WHY deicer is bad for pets, it makes me wonder how safe deicer can be if we have to watch out for this:

"Wiping that stuff off their paws is extremely important, because the first thing they are going to do is sit down and start licking off their paws," she warns. Nelson warns that could mean been trouble. "All of those chemicals, all of those things they have just come in with are going straight into their G.I. tracts and possibly into their bloodstream."

If ingesting this stuff isn't good for house pets, how healthy can it be for the ducks I watched, for the food they were eating in the water, and for the fish?

If people have more information on this you are very welcome to post it here.

It is probably not.
But when my daughter was about 2,we were playing out in the snow and the next thing I know she is eating that blue rock salt in the road.
She is 14 now and seems healthy enough.
As far as the animals go,I guess it depends on how much the ingest.
And all that stuff getting washed down the sewer drains.
All because we humans are way more important then anything else on this planet.

Usually deicer is made up of Calcium Chloride.


I found a MSDS on it:

Potential Acute Health Effects:
Hazardous in case of skin contact (irritant), of eye contact (irritant), of ingestion, of inhalation. Slightly hazardous in case of skin contact (permeator).
Potential Chronic Health Effects:
CARCINOGENIC EFFECTS: Not available.
MUTAGENIC EFFECTS: Mutagenic for mammalian somatic cells. Mutagenic for bacteria and/or yeast. TERATOGENIC EFFECTS: Not available.
DEVELOPMENTAL TOXICITY: Not available. The substance may be toxic to heart, cardiovascular system. Repeated or prolonged exposure to the substance can produce target organs damage.

Calcium Chloride Material Safety Data Sheet

Doesn't seem like it's to good.

reply to post by TheLieWeLive

MUTAGENIC EFFECTS: Mutagenic for mammalian somatic cells. Mutagenic for bacteria and/or yeast.

Oh,thats priceless.
We don't know if it will cause cancer and such,but it could cause mutations.

Originally posted by kdog1982
reply to post by TheLieWeLive

 

MUTAGENIC EFFECTS: Mutagenic for mammalian somatic cells. Mutagenic for bacteria and/or yeast.

Oh,thats priceless.
We don't know if it will cause cancer and such,but it could cause mutations.

As long as my car doesn't slip on the road.
The sad thought of a man who doesn't have the capacity for understanding this beautiful world we find ourselves on and what we do to it...

For one.. we shouldn't even be living anywhere close to snow, naturally.

But because we have the tech to do it, we are here...

The stuff that truck is spraying on the road, is either brine, or a de-icer made from sugar beets. the latter being more environmentally friendly than the former.

It can't be good!


It wasn't meant to be there, and I imagine excess amounts will eventually take a toll on any surrounding ecosystems.

reply to post by TheLieWeLive


Thankfully Calcium Chloride is too expensive for your township to be spreading on your local highways. It is almost exclusively sold in bag form for home use only.

I guess a phone call could clear this up. They are suppose to keep an MSDS on whatever chemical it is so getting one faxed over to a taxpayer shouldn't be to hard to do.

Originally posted by lordpiney
The stuff that truck is spraying on the road, is either brine, or a de-icer made from sugar beets. the latter being more environmentally friendly than the former.

Gawd, I hope that's all it is, but even with salt or beets, I'm still thinking too much of anything isn't healthy for little river fish or the vegetation that grows there. I dunno.

Those little fish in the stream will be all sugared up if it's beet juice. Good thing their parents don't have to keep track of them. I'm not sure what that much betaine would do for the environment.

reply to post by TheLieWeLive


When I did snow elimination and ice mitigation (that is the fancy term I used lol), we used liquid glycol. Now, glycol isn't terribly toxic -- but it did have an MSDS sheet that said inhaling or drinking it wasn't that great for you. The stuff worked pretty awesome, it's the same stuff they put on runways and airplane wings.

Other places might use other things...you'd have to contact your dept. of transportation or whoever does your roads to find out what kind they use locally.