We evaluated toxic potential of the five deicers on landscape trees, agricultural crops and aquatic life. Most of all the elements of Highway environment, Landscape tree vitality has decreased immediately after the snow removal period. In spring, both...
We evaluated toxic potential of the five deicers on landscape trees, agricultural crops and aquatic life. Most of all the elements of Highway environment, Landscape tree vitality has decreased immediately after the snow removal period. In spring, both coniferous trees and deciduous trees have similar effect done by leaf spray treatment and soil spray treatment. Decrease in vitality level turns out to affect of sodium deicer spray to the trees health. The overall the result of this experiment was that when deicing agents contact the leaf during the snow removing work, especially spraying onto the leaves by vehicles on the highway roads, Na, Ca, and Cl damage the trees that will lead to leaf chlorosis, and dehydration. Excess of Ca blocks other substances to be absorbed, and this damages the trees even further; the solution for this is to leave enough space between driveway and trees to minimize the spread of the deicing agents. There isn't yet a perfect solution to prevent damages by the installation of soil water irrigation system, but it will at least reduce some amount of the toxic salinity accumulation of roadside soil To test phytotoxicity of 3 snow removal compounds such as NaCl, Cacl₂ and LCD, the seeds and seedling were sawn or grown on the agar plate with pH indicators. All snow removal compounds have exhibited an inhibitory effects only above 250 mM. In ctual, the germination and growth of all crops were not affected in the concentration less than 100 mM. We evaluated toxic potential of the five deicers on laquatic life. Median lethal concentrations(LC_{50}s) for 96 h of the deicers ranged from 17,000 to 38,000 mg/L for medaka, from 10,000 to 17,000 mf/L for carp and median effect concentration(EC_{50}) for 96 h of them were from 1,600 to 2,800 mg/L for water flea, suggesting that the five deicers have very low toxic potential to aquatic organisms. Among the five deicers, LCD, a newly developed deicer, was less toxic, whereas sodium chloride was most toxic to all or organisms tested.