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Road crews across the United States use more than 24 million tons of road salt (sodium chloride) to melt ice and snow each year – triple the volume used in 1975. Road salt is cost-effective and prevents traffic accidents.
But there is an ecological downside to this practice: rain and meltwater dissolve and wash road salt into streams, rivers, lakes, and ponds, where it severely impacts aquatic life and degrades freshwater environments.
Chloride also enters waterways from other sources, including fertilizer runoff, septic systems, wastewater, and leachate from landfills.
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