Water Quality Implications and the Toxicological Effects of Chloride-Based Deicers

Abstract

Traditionally, the main priority of winter road maintenance has been assigned to level of service, cost-effectiveness, and corrosion rather than other less wellcharacterized effects such as impacts to water quality. It is increasingly vital to understand the environmental footprint of deicers, including their impacts on aquatic ecosystems. Chloride based deicers do not degrade in the natural environment and their application on winter pavements can lead to accumulation in adjacent environments over time. Information presented to date on deicers generally includes chemical composition and performance of deicers, while additional information on deicer aquatic toxicity is needed to enable fully-informed decisions by stakeholders. This work presents a state-of-the-knowledge review of the impacts of chloride based deicers and additives on water and aquatic species, and the issue of heavy metal leaching. Toxicity associated with the direct effect of deicers or with the indirect effect via their interactions with runoff chemistry is reviewed as well. This work will assist the stakeholder agencies in the search for effective practices to reduce the toxicity and other water quality implications of chloride based deicers.

Temperature affects acute mayfly responses to elevated salinity: implications for toxicity of road de-icing salts

“…The challenge in both cases is general applicability of findings as it is well known that ion composition is important to overall salt toxicity [30,58 -62]. Additional references can be found in review articles [63][64][65][66][67][68][69]. Salt toxicity has been found to vary greatly among aquatic species, with recent data showing that some mayflies and juvenile mussels are among the most sensitive species tested [34,52,56,70].…”

A peony-leaves-derived liquid corrosion inhibitor: protecting carbon steel from NaCl

“…These salts are highly soluble, very mobile, difficult to remove, and inherently corrosive. They may pose shortterm and long-term risks to water (5)(6)(7)(8), soil (9), vegetation (10), wildlife (11), and transportation assets (12). For instance, Siegel tested toxicity thresholds of chloride for 21 aquatic species and found fathead minnow being the most sensitive species with an acute toxicity level of 874 mg Cl − /L and chronic exposure of 252 mg Cl − /L (13).…”

Toxicity and chemical composition of commercial road palliatives versus oil and gas produced waters

“…Because of their high solubility, salt ions are mobile in the environment and rising salinity has been documented in freshwater resources across North America (Dugan et al, 2017). Most research has focused on salt used for WRM (Fay and Shi, 2012;Hintz and Relyea, 2019;Asensio et al, 2017;Nazari et al, 2015;Arnott et al, 2020), but rising salinity in streams and groundwater near roads treated with chloride-based dust suppressants has also been reported (Goodrich et al, 2009a;Eckstein, 2011;Bair and Digel, 1990). Freshwater salinization impacts drinking water resources (Eckstein, 2011;Pieper et al, 2018) and poses risks to roadside vegetation (Goodrich and Jacobi, 2012;Goodrich et al, 2009b) and aquatic organisms at all trophic levels (Hintz and Relyea, 2019;Arnott et al, 2020;Honarvar Nazari et al, 2021).…”