In emergencies, dumping ocean water on fires may be the best option. But seawater can have long-term effects on equipment and ecosystems, as a novel coastal experiment shows.

Saltwater corrodes firefighting equipment and may harm ecosystems, especially those like the chaparral shrublands around Los Angeles that aren’t normally exposed to seawater. Gardeners know that small amounts of salt – added, say, as fertilizer – does not harm plants, but excessive salts can stress and kill plants.

  • DerArzt@lemmy.world
    11·
    14 hours ago

    But there’s way more salt produced that way than the market wants to buy

    Artificial scarcity from Capitalism yet again!

    • booly@sh.itjust.works
      4·
      14 hours ago

      We want to desalinate water so that we have fresh water.

      Doing so generates salt as waste and requires safe/responsible disposal.

      We can sell some of the salt, as a product.

      But the market won’t buy all of the salt.

      So the salt just goes back to the “waste” category, and we need to find disposal methods.

      I don’t see where scarcity (whether artificial or natural) comes into play. The world has lots and lots of salt, and anyone who wants it can get it very cheap.