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0 pointsisthispermanent6y ago0 comments

It's not just about humans. Waterways, wildlife, agriculture. The term "Salt the Earth" is shorthand for covering land with enough salt to prevent anything from growing.

Whether it's directly benign to humans is one thing, but the indirect effects are hard to account for.

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strainer6y ago· 2 in thread

That phrase appears to be apocryphal, salt quickly disperses in practice and no land has ever been known to be deliberately contaminated by it.

I feel these vague worries about road salting relate to this article about highly toxic contamination as a kind of "what-about-ery" but are even less connected by having been introduced as "kind-of-reminds-me-about-ery".

isthispermanentOP6y ago

We're dancing around the point here.

Point being, that we cannot always determine the effects of continuously repeating small, seemingly benign actions. Taking tens of thousands of tons of salt from one place on Earth and dumping it on another where salt is relatively scarce has unknown side effects.

Hand-waving over it with "eh, but it probably won't hurt anything" misses the point of the discussion. That is the attitude that tends to get us trouble.

Smoking: "eh, that's probably not what's causing you to get sick" Climate change: "eh, it's probably not us" etc.

strainer6y ago

Since you are curious I really suggest you look into it - read some environmental studies and articles on salt pollution, get some details on the actual situation to offer rather than you know, just sayings and analogies.

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