Why salt overuse is a persistent probem

Madison, WI, has been trying to reduce the use of de-icing salt since the 1970s.  Despite many sincere efforts, application of salt by the City, plus private contractors, has continued to climb...along with the levels of salt in our lakes.

Why is it so hard to control the salt problem?  Let's try to think outside the box, looking for solutions where they may be hiding.

Problems that defy solution

There are some long-term societal problems I call "Intractible Problems," because they have defied solution for centuries.  Now, I hope readers will forgive me for speculating above my pay grade.  I'm just trying to put the salt problem in perspective.  There are some things to learn about why "problems" persist without solutions.

Drug abuse: There is increasing evidence that biology is lurking behind addiction.  Alkaloid substances like nicotine and caffein are known to be attractive to animals like bees.

But then society steps in and makes the problem a lot worse.  The management guru and author, Peter Drucker, once observed that problems like drug abuse are difficult to solve in proportion to the number of societal groups that benefit from the problem:

1. Politicians get votes by taking dramatic positions against drug addicts, peddlers, or smugglers.  This circus recently reached new heights as boats transporting drugs are being blown out of the water by the US military, using aircraft carriers and guided missiles.
2. Journalists and authors boost their careers by writing sensational articles and books.  Lobbyists play a similar role in promoting positions.
3. Law enforcement officials owe their jobs to combating drugs and stoking fear.  They often get to keep expensive assets like vehicles seized in the course of enforcement. This creates more incentives to keep promoting concern about drugs.
4. Fearful or credulous citizens continue to consume the articles, vote for the politicians, and support law enforcement, despite much evidence that current policies aren't working. Citizens may not be benefiting, but they seem to enjoy reading and hearing about the fuss and may "feel" they have benefited by voting for politicians who stoke fear.
5. Drug companies: Purdue Pharma, developed and sold OxyContin beginning in the mid‑1990s, promoting them irresponsibly, leading to widespread addiction.
6. Doctors and pharmacies profited as they continued to make prescriptions available despite obvious signs the drugs were being misused.
7. Farmers in the US benefit from growing cannabis, while Afghans grow poppies to produce heroin and Columbians grow cocaine.  Chemical companies benefit from producing precursors for fentanyl.
8. Drug pushers, smugglers, and trans-national crime gangs.  In many cases, the criminals are protected by politicians or law enforcement.

Following Drucker's lead, we see at least eight groups are in benefiting from the current ineffective approach to drugs.  I'm not saying people in all these groups want the drug problem to continue (except for those who directly profit).  What I am saying is that many groups benefit from all the noise and churn involved, while their actions support those unproductive approaches.  No wonder drugs are such an intractable problem.

Guns 

This issue is similar to drugs in that many of the same groups are involved.  Substitute manufacturers of guns for the groups that produce and push drugs.  One difference from drugs is that guns are more political.  This leads to the rise of advocacy groups like the NRA which have been extremely effective in both promoting guns and backing politicians who protect guns.

One extremely sinister aspect of the guns is that, the more fear grows from gun violence, the more people want to buy guns to protect themselves.  It's a self-reinforcing spiral leading back to the Middle Ages.

The problem of violent crime has much in common with both drugs and guns.

What's evident when considering these most intractable problems is that fear is a driving force.

Why salt overuse is a persistent problem

I call salt a "persistent problem" because it's not "intractable" to the same degree.  It's not as ancient as drugs or guns, dating mostly from the time when we started walking and driving on pavement that sometimes became icy.

Before salt, people sprinkled sand or "cinders" from burning coal on the ice.  Then we switched to salt when the sand began to clog waterway and cloud the water.  Nevertheless, overuse of salt has become a worldwide problem in northern climates--with reports of corroded bridges collapsing in Italy.

There aren't nearly as many groups benefiting from salt.  But there are some...

• Miners and transporters of salt or other deicers
• Manufacturers of equipment used in spreading salt
• Journalists.  Most are well behaved, excepting a few (below)
• Lobbyists: see below.
• Retailers of salt
• Trial lawyers who sue in slip/fall cases
• Contractors who spread salt on private properties
• Merchants or landlords--want to protect their customers or project a "caring" image
• Citizens benefit when they use salt to clear sidewalks, avoid lawsuits, or prevent slips on their front steps. They "feel" safer when more salt is spread in public places. Public officials are strongly influenced by complaints about slippery roads from the public. 

Note that several key actors from drugs and guns aren't big players in the salt problem.  Politicians and law enforcement are well-behaved here.

But fear of slipping on ice, and of vehicle accidents, is a real factor.  It has become axiomatic that salt makes us safer, despite evidence that oversalting has created disasters.  When roads are salted, people drive faster, counteracting the safety from salt.

Region-wide snowstorms, or multi-car collisions on highways covered by patches of black ice get a lot of attention in the news.  One of the reasons for so much attention is that pro-salt lobby groups promote stories about the benefits of salt.  

Some years ago shortly after a widespread snowstorm, many news stories appeared about the enormous economic saving to the region because preparations had been made for the storm--preparations, including of course, salt.  These stories originated with a lobby group.  Now, salt is associated with protecting commerce during the winter.

Safety vs harms of salt

This calculation of benefits vs harms is nearly impossible for stakeholders: politicians, officials, merchants, and citizens.  One reason is that the data hardly exists.  

Attempts have been made to calculate the harms from salt.  Most commonly they mention the economic cost for degradation of infrastructure.  These include corrosion of pipes, bridges, vehicles, and other infrastructure.  

It's less common, and harder, to calculate the dollar cost of harm to the environment.  These include lost recreational opportunities, the dollar value of lost fisheries, and many more harms.  These calculations are extremely difficult because of the complex interactions between species, the myriad subtle way that species can be harmed. It's also challenging to translate these harms into dollar values.

For example, recent research shows that pesticides leached into water shorten the lifespan of fish-- but do so without noticeable declines in vigor in the younger fish.  Who would have suspected such a subtle effect?  (Not salt, but it illustrates the unpredictable effects of environmental contaminants.)

Dollar values of harm are abstract and boring--they don't gain traction.  

Visible vs hidden

Everyone can see with their own eyes that a salted sidewalk is less slippery, usually. 

I was working at a heavily salted sidewalk, crouching down beside it, sweeping up salt to measure how much.  A woman came along, walking her dog.  As she approached, she scooped up her dog to protect its paws from the salt.  Preoccupied, she didn't notice me till she was very close.  Then, slowing quickly, she slipped for a moment on the loose salt before regaining her balance.

People struggle to weigh the readily visible benefits of salt against the nearly invisible harms.  Bridges and parking ramps rust from the inside.  Pre-stressed concrete beams cease to function when the steel ropes or wires inside rust.  They are very hard to inspect.  There are metods for reducing corrosion in new structures (like coating the steel elements inside with resins), but these increase costs of construction.

Failure modes of bridges and other corroded structures can be hard to predict.  When the causes of collapse are found, corrosion from salt is often just one of the causes.  When the I35W bridge in Minneapolis collapsed, there were 6 contributing causes--corrosion from salt was one.

The primary cause was a design flaw.  The designer was dead, so he couldn't defend himself.  His "sexy" design flaw was a sensation, while corrosion from salt was ignored by most people.

In Flint, MI, 99,000 people, including 55,000 children, were exposed to potential lead poisoning with overuse of salt as one of the causes.  The same disaster killed 12 of the 100 people who caught Legionnaire's disease.  The causal relationship of this outbreak to salt took so long to uncover that, again, people didn't realize salt was one of the causes.

Slow and invisible corrosion is easy to ignore. It's easy to respond to citizen complaints by spreading more salt.  As salt levels in water increase, animal populations will first lose vigor, then decline gradually.  Eventually, ecological collapse will occur when a keystone species finally succumbs to salt.l  All these harms take decades to unfold.

The zombie beets

Uncritical journalists sometimes contribute to the salt problem while looking for local stories with an upbeat vibe.  Enter sugar beets, stage left, to much applause.

Sugar is produced from sugar beet in a few states, including Wisconsin.  Sugar is extracted from the juice, which must then be properly disposed of because it's effectively sewage.  If dumped to waterways, juice decomposes in the water, fertilizing it (toxic algae bloom), and creating a deficit of oxygen, which leads to a fish kill.

The story that keeps rising from the grave is how some highway department experimented with beet juice they got for free--spreading it on the highway instead of salt.  And it worked! 

What you don't hear is how the sugar producer got to dispose of sewage for free.  This story was even mentioned by a Senator at the hearings on a salt bill that I recently attended.  You are sure to hear this story at nearly every public meeting on salt.

Why beet juice cannot substitute for salt...

• Pollutes the water and could kill fish by depleting oxygen
• Promotes growth of algae
• Juice won't be free if the idea catches on
• There won't be nearly enough beet juice to replace salt
• Harder to transport and store than salt
• Not as effective as salt on ice

Easy solutions for difficult problems

It's just human nature.  If there's an annoying everyday problem, and some person suggests an easy solution, people are suckers.

You see it all over the internet.  "Deer eating your shrubs?  Sprinkle coyote urine about."  "Danger of collision with dear on the road? I install an ultrasonic whistle on your car.  Mice or chipmunks a problem?  Spread coyote urine, or mothballs, cayenne pepper, and so on.  The latest: rats chewing the electronics under the hood of your car?  It's a real problem, but the solutions aren't.

The reason these solutions persist--like the zombie juice--is simple.   People like folksy solutions offered by neighbors.  They reason: "I don't like coyote urine, so I'll bet the mice won't either."  People will try anything once, provided it costs less than $20.

The salt solution is similar.  It doesn't cost much, it's easy to use, everyone believes in it, and it works sometimes.  Then there's the fear of injury to yourself and being sued by others.

To make matters worse, some of the alternatives to salt are counter intuitive.  For example, snow and ice waste away via evaporation, even at temperatures well below freezing.  It's called "sublimation."  It can be used to speed the disappearance of ice.  Almost no one knows about sublimation.

Because of all the quirks of human nature I've listed, kicking the salt habit is going to be difficult.  It's going to take a lot of public education.  We should focus on the various groups who contribute to the problem.