Cleanzine: your weekly cleaning and hygiene industry newsletter 18th April 2024 Issue no. 1110
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Russian road maintenance association calls for regulation on development and use of anti-icing materials
RosZimDor, a Russian Association of Winter Road Maintenance formed recently to bring together all sides concerned with combating snow and ice, has announced a drive towards a federal set of standards and regulations of anti-icing materials, the way they are used and how they are developed nationwide.
Currently, there is no unified set of rules in Russia that would govern exactly how the municipalities are to deal with snow and ice or which anti-icing materials to apply; local governments are left to experiment on their own. This issue is particularly acute in many large northern municipalities, where local authorities have to resort to the use of industrial waste, salt, ash, sand and other materials they could find - all of which may pose ecological issues and cause other complications.
The existing legal and professional standards on the use and application of anti-icing materials are just too weak or unrefined, say RosZimDor members.
Says the lab head of hygiene of soil at the State Scientific Research Institute of Sysyn, prof. Igor Kryatov: "The main problem in the entire issue of icing and its removal effort is that there is no quality control framework in place on the subcontractors' side.
"Despite the fact that all of the anti-icing materials in Moscow are tested by the labs and have to pass those tests on many parameters, including ecological and sanitary standards, there are no guarantees in place to assure us that the roadway maintenance will end up applying exactly those materials that passed, or that they will be applying them properly. "Hence, there is a need to create a unified commission and a unified code, and to implement that code throughout the system: from the supplier down to the roadway maintenance."
Moscow is one of the country's pioneers in establishing a very detailed, rigorous and transparent approach towards procurement, storage and application of the anti-icing materials. What happens on the wintry roadways of other towns and cities in Russia, where no such system exists - is only anyone's guess.
"Similar problem has been dealt with in France," says Sergey Mizitov, one of the chief experts of the Association.
"As soon as roadway maintenance abandoned the use of technical salt and started applying more efficient anti-icing materials, the department of ecology in concert with transport authorities wrote a new code, which established exactly every parameter of such materials permissible for use in France, be it safety, ecology or its corrosiveness. Substances that are not in line with this set of rules are not permissible for use.
"We only have such system in Moscow, and no one could attest as to how safe the anti-icing materials are in use in other cities, or even exactly what it is that is in them."
The newly-created Association of Winter Road Maintenance is offering its help to the Government, based on its rich scientific research and applied experience it has embodied. The Association has many leading scientists, researchers and experts in various fields in its ranks, all united with one simple idea: to make winter roadway maintenance safe and comfortable for people and the environment.
The main task at hand of the Association will be research, development and implementation of the better ways of winter roadway maintenance, establishing and promoting a new set of regulation and professional codes and guidelines that would also take into account the various local climate and weather particulars.
E: [email protected]
W: www.roszimdor.ru
10th April 2014