Salt industry sets all-time safety record in 2007. Canadian Salt (Pointe Claire, QC), Detroit Salt (Detroit, MI) and United Salt (Houston, TX) were the safest salt companies last year, but the entire industry had a record-shattering, all-time lowest number of lost-time injuries, the Salt Institute reported during its March annual meeting.

Individual facilities were recognized as well. Best incidence records were achieved by Morton Salt's Manistee, MI evap plant, Detroit Salt's Detroit, MI mine and Morton Salt's Newark, CA processing plant. Morton Salt's terminals and warehouses won top honors. Regarding severity, the industry standard was set once again by Morton Salt's Rittman, OH salt refinery (owner of the industry's historic best safety record: 7.2 million consecutive safe work-hours), Canadian Salt's Ojibway mine in Windsor, Ontario and Cargill Salt's Watkins Glen, NY salt refinery. Cargill Salt was honored for achieving the industry's lowest severity rate for terminals and warehouses.

More good news on worker safety. Congratulations to the workers and management of the following facilities for their achievement of significant safety milestones:

• Morton Salt, Silver Springs, NY evap plant, 1.9 million hours
• Morton Salt, Manistee, MI evap plant, 900,000 hours
• Compass Minerals, Lyons, KS evap plant, 700,000 hours
• The Canadian Salt Co., Ltd., Pugwash, NS mine, 400,000 hours and 12 months
• Compass Minerals, Goderich, ON evap plant, 200,000 hours
• Morton Salt, Long Beach, CA processing plant, 14 years

 

 

In remarks March 31 before the National Ground Water Association annual meeting in Memphis, TN, Salt Institute technical director Mort Satin explained that during the past 40 years, the Salt Institute has pioneered and led in developing best management practices for the storage and application of highway deicing salt. "Sensible Salting" has won the Institute awards for its pro-active program of "teaching its customers how to use less of its product."

The recommendations are practical and common sense, he said. But their environmental impacts have been accepted intuitively as environmentally protective, never actually proven empirically. If it was a big step to urge customers to cut back their consumption of the industry's product, "letting it all hang out" in subjecting the best management practices to "a quantitatively rigorous assessment" performed by an independent academic-government-industry research consortium is equally daring, he averred. Yet that's just what the University of Waterloo (ON) is undertaking in a two year study that began this past winter. Supported by Environment Ontario, Environment Canada, the Salt Institute and several municipalities in the Region of Waterloo, each of the practices in Canada's Road Salts Code of Practice will be assessed for environmental impact. The Code is an outgrowth of the Syntheses of Practice developed by the Transportation Association of Canada which, in turn, had refined the practices of the original Sensible Salting program. The Salt Institute participated directly in the development of the TAC Syntheses and Environment Canada Code.

The principal investigator for the project is Dr. Micheal Stone who co-authored Mort's NGWA paper.

 

Do US food manufacturers need to use iodized salt? The Center for Science in the Public Interest (CSPI) is at it again. Its researcher called the Salt Institute last week to inquire about the "crisis" of declining iodine intake levels in the American population. We welcomed their concern and explained how the gradual shift from round can home cooking to consumption of more restaurant and processed food consumption patterns had eroded iodine intakes, but noted that Americans are still consuming more than the minimum recommended amounts and cautioned against alarmist publicity which might trigger an over- reaction and consumption of too much iodine. CSPI president Michael Jacobson, nevertheless, has begun to query salt companies and their large food salt customers asking why iodized salt is not being used in all foods. If you field such a call, either call the Institute or read our summary response to the question: Do US food manufacturers need to use iodized salt?

New Zealand bakers required to use iodized salt in breadmaking. As in the U.S. use of iodized salt by food processors in New Zealand has been voluntary. No longer when it comes to bread. The joint Australian-New Zealand Food Standards Agency (FSANZ) issued a directive in March mandating use of iodized salt in breadmaking to reverse the country's declining iodine sufficiency status -- a condition also observed in the U.S. and Australia. As we go to press, FSANZ announced identical requirements in Australia. The harmonized rules will become effective in September 2009.

Immediately, the New Zealand Bakery Association blasted FSANZ, warning that its new requirement of iodized salt in bread "will be expensive and claiming there are not a lot of facilities to process iodised salt in the country." Noting that "half truths are the most insidious," the Salt Institute responded, defending the FSANZ decision and pointing out that: 1) plain salt has 1/100th the amount of iodine of iodine-fortified salt; it may be detectable in a lab, but it's insignificant nutritionally, 2) salt iodization is not expensive; it costs pennies per year per person and 3) New Zealand may not have "a lot of facilities to process iodized salt," but this small country is well-served by Salt Institute member companies Dominion Salt of New Zealand and Cheetham Salt of Australia whose few plants make virtually all the food salt in the country and can easily accomplish the required iodization virtually with the flip of a switch.

 

A Swedish-led group of European researchers set off to document the relationship between dietary electrolytes (magnesium, calcium, potassium and sodium) and stroke risk. The ended up documenting the lack of an association of sodium and risk of stroke, adding to the lengthening list of "health outcomes" studies which are remarkably consistent in their conclusion: reducing dietary salt won't improve health.

Published in the March 10 issue of the Archives of Internal Medicine, the researchers studied 26,556 older Swedes; all were smokers. Over the 13.6 years of the study, the group recorded 579 stroke events. The population had extremely high salt intakes; the average sodium intakes for the five quintiles of sodium ranged from 3,909 mg/day to 5,848 mg/day (the U.S., by comparison averages about 3,500 mg/day -- lower than the lowest 20% of the Swedes in the study).

The findings: stroke incidence was nearly identical in all five quintiles and not only was there no trend in the pattern, but of the 30 separate analyses performed, not a single subgroup had a significant relationship between sodium and stroke incidence. Add this study to the list.

 

The American Automobile Association has released The AAA Crashes vs. Congestion Report arguing that societal costs from traffic fatalities and injuries is more than double the costs of congestion. Good reminder. We object only to the "versus" separating the twin concerns. We must insist on roads that are safe and congestion-free.

The study by Cambridge Systematics estimates that traffic crashes cost each American $1,051 for a total economic burden on the economy of $164.2 billion. Data from the Texas Transportation Institute put the tab for congestion at $67.6 billion or $430 per person. With Congress readying itself to tackle reauthorization of the federal surface transportation program next year and with the federal Highway Trust Fund approaching insolvency, these measures should be front-and-center in the public policy discussion.

For years, the anti-highway lobby has inveighed against "paving over America" and the highway lobby has foolishly cast the argument in terms of the deteriorating condition of the nation's roads and bridges. Too true. And when the I-35W bridge plunged into the Mississippi, the poignancy of the roadbuilders' lament was manifest. The thought of an aging and inadequate roadway infrastructure contributing to the 42,642 people killed last year on American roads is totally unacceptable. We know most of those deaths are avoidable and now we know the cost of under-funding highway improvements.

The quality of the policy debate, however, would be improved if we move beyond contesting the number of "structurally deficient" bridges or pothole-pocked or rutted roadway surfaces. Nor should we accept the notion that we need to starve investments in congestion relief to pay for safer roads. The two go hand in hand. Non-recurring congestion (the kind not caused by rush hour) is associated with clearing traffic crashes and combating weather conditions like snow & ice storms that contribute so much to those crashes. Simply applying salt as part of a professional winter operations program cuts 88.3% of the injury crashes and keeps the roads reliably available for our mobile society. In fact, in most states, the cost of failing to keep winter roads open through winter maintenance operations generally costs more for each day of failure than the annual cost of snowfighting (data by Global Insight, Inc.).

As Congress sets up the debate on highway spending, let's focus attention on the outcomes we can expect our roads to deliver. We shouldn't be building roads to create jobs (or re-elect politicos) nor should we endanger drivers' lives and our national economic competitiveness by short-sightedly opposing transportation improvements due to suspicion over the self-interested motivation of construction companies. Let's measure transportation outcomes -- the service we drivers are paying for through our gas taxes -- and invest to reduce the tragic waste of more than 40,000 lives every year and reverse the corrosive erosion of reliable highway mobility caused by congestion.

Let the engineers and the Federal Highway Administration's Office of Operations help us define the choices rather than jury-rig our national highway priorities through Congressional earmarks.

It's not AAA versus AASHTO (the American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials). Both AAA and AASHTO care deeply about BOTH safety and mobility. Let's not make this mountain tougher to scale than it already is.

 

Significant impacts on U.S. transportation planning are forecast in a new report by the Transportation Research Board, an arm of the National Academy of Sciences. TRB Special Report 290: Potential Impacts of Climate Change on U.S. Transportation concedes that "Little consensus exists among transportation professionals that climate change is occurring or warrants action now." But the report identifies "plausible future scenarios" which represent "significant challenges for transportation professionals." The committee "finds compelling scientific evidence that climate change is occurring, and that it will trigger new, extreme weather events."

Special Report 290 identifies "five climate changes of particular importance to transportation and estimates the probability of their occurrence during the twenty-first century." Included, as #4, is "Increases in intense precipitation events. It is highly likely (greater than 90 percent probability of occurrence) that intense precipitation events will continue to become more frequent in widespread areas of the United States."

Louisiana being America's largest salt-producing state, the salt industry will be particularly interested in the report's prediction of increased coastal flooding, particularly of the Gulf coast and drier conditions in the upper Midwest "resulting in lower water levels and reduced capactiy to ship agricultural and other bulk commodities."

Among the adaptive operational responses, the first example identified is "Snow and ice control accounts for about 40 percent of annual highway operating budgets in the northern U.S. states" and "operational responses are likely to become more routine and proactive than today's approach of treating severe weather on an ad hoc emergency basis." Roadway designers are encouraged to recognize the likelihood of more freeze-thaw cycles. In this, of course, snowfighting professionals are already well advanced in their "adaptation." The committee speculates that there will be "benefits for safety and reduced interruptions if frozen precipitation shifts to rainfall."

Canadian discussions and studies are more advanced than in the U.S. and also predict impacts on use of road salt for winter maintenance. In "Climate Change and Ontario's Winter Roads: Trends and Impacts on Ontario Winter Road Maintainence Ops" and "Climate Change Impacts and Adaptation: A Canadian Perspective," experts agreed that salt usage in southern and western Ontario would be unchanged by global warming, but that salt usage would increase in northern and eastern parts of the province.

 

The Washington Post carries stories of lots of apologies, many of them, unfortunately, from erring "public servants." And many of those aren't apologies at all, deep down. They often lament the pain, humiliation and embarrassment their errant behavior inflicts on others without displaying the authentic repentance most of us are taught each Sabbath.

Now comes the Virginia Department of Transportation which confessed in Friday's Post that it "bungled" the response to a February 12 ice storm that put thousands at risk and hundreds, at least, stranded in their cars on the elevated bridges of the "Mixing Bowl" in Springfield. A disastrous storm, we'd agree and the disaster compounded by VDOT's mistakes.

Congratulations, however, to VDOT for manfully stepping up and doing the right thing. Expressions of regret, even sincere and painfully public expressions, are important -- and expected. What the public should expect -- and, in this case, received -- is some evidence that things will be different next time.

We expect that VDOT does post-storm and post-season analysis of its snowfighting response efforts. That's the only way agencies can improve their performance of this life-saving service. VDOT's report, the Post summarized, identified specific failures, including that "anti-icing equipment sat unused, electronic warning signs remained dark and a motorist alert system was not updated for hours." As taxpayers and roadway users, we applaud VDOT Commissioner David Ekern's confession because it so clearly points the way forward to addressing identified shortcomings:

"We got overwhelmed," VDOT Commissioner David S. Ekern said yesterday in a telephone news conference. "We weren't prepared for the size and magnitude."

Ekern released a frank review of the agency's response to the storm, identifying errors, misjudgments and communication gaffes by VDOT workers.

"The events of February 12 were clearly unacceptable in terms of our performance," Ekern said at the news conference. "We'll learn from this, and we'll move forward."

The ice storm, which occurred at the beginning of the rush hour, closed one of the East Coast's largest highway interchanges, which was completed last year at a cost of $676 million. There were 331 traffic incidents, including 108 at the Springfield interchange between 3 p.m. and midnight, when the last ramp was reopened. About 50 injuries were reported in the region from accidents caused by the quarter-inch-thick coating of ice.

Ekern outlined a series of agency reforms and procedural changes, including developing a formal action plan for an ice storm -- VDOT does not have one -- and clarifying the chain of command. Of the more than 1,300 pieces of equipment available to the Northern Virginia VDOT district, only five are capable of anti-icing, and they are owned by contractors.

The Salt Institute pointed out the DAILY COST of inadequate snowfighting in Virginia as modeled by the economic consulting firm Global Insight, Inc. is $205 million. These costs of failure include lost wages, lost retail sales and lost federal, state and local tax revenues payable on that economic activity. Just in terms of reducing crashes during snowstorms, applying salt to winter highways pays for itself in the first half hour after it's applied. Not a lot of government programs deliver that much bang for the buck.

Of course, we'd prefer to offer congratulations to our heroic snowfighters for their success in keeping roadways open and operating safely, but this was the next-best thing: the realistic likelihood that next winter a similar storm will be handled with greater efficiency. Thanks for caring, VDOT.

Thank you, civil servants. Now, if we could only get our elected politicians to be such stand-up models of what to do when "mistakes were made."

 

The Kronos Workforce Institute has just released results of a survey this winter showing that, despite heroic efforts by American snowfighters, tardiness and absenteeism are far from unusual in the U.S. snowbelt. Harris Interactive conducted the survey of 2,810 adults, "Extreme Weather Wreaking Havoc on Employee Attendance," January 14-16.

The survey found one-third (33%) of regular commuters have had their commutes affected by severe weather over the past three months. Of that segment, six in ten (61%) reported longer commuting times, nearly a quarter have been late to work (23%), one in six (16%) have had to leave early, 6% couldn't get to work at all and 5% elected to work from home rather than face the elements. Twenty percent reported lost wage income because of weather events.

 

A couple samples of the media coverage greeting the launch of BizCentral.org, announced to readers of SI Report last month. The coverage "promotes" the Salt Institute to the ranks of Washington's largest and most powerful industry lobby groups. ABC News declared:

Blogging: It's not just for the little guy anymore.

Big business has officially moved into the blogosphere, a territory once claimed by radicals, grassroots organizers and armchair political philosophers.

Bizcentral.org is a new group blog authored by lobbyists for some of the biggest industries in America. The petroleum industry is represented, as well as nuclear power, chain drug stores, the American Trucking Association - even the Salt Institute, "the world's foremost source of authoritative information about salt (sodium chloride) and its more than 14,000 known uses."

The Capitol Hill must-read paper Politico reinforced the image:

The oh-so-unhip world of business trade associations took a small shot at edginess Monday when nearly a dozen groups launched the blog BizCentral.org, aimed at Washington's influencers. In an Internet landscape littered with blogs, the modest venture might seem unremarkable except for the big names on the marquee: Business Roundtable, American Trucking Associations, American Petroleum Institute, CTIA - The Wireless Association, National Association of Chain Drug Stores, National Electrical Manufacturers Association, Nuclear Energy Institute, Organization for International Investment, Personal Care Products Council, Salt Institute and the U.S. Telecom Association.

 

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