@@ Background In the Twelfth Five Year Plan of China, the local government outlined its plan to develop Beijing into one of the world's premier garden cities, with both the public and governors attaching a great importance to the preservation of urban greenspace. During the severe snowstorms throughout the 2009/2010 winter, however, 29,471 tons of chlorate snow melting agents were sprayed on nearly 200 roads around Beijing to open roads for traffic. In spring 2010, the remaining pollution had damaged the health of surrounding plants, and had negatively affected the road ecosystem and local economy. Snowmelting agent, also known as road salt or deicer, is a kind of effective and economical material to remove snow from roads, and is widely used in many highlatitude cities around the world. However, the flow on effects of its use, such as the contamination of soil, water supplies and ecologically significant habitats, are of concern to environmental managers, bureaucrats, researchers and the broader public. The paper examined the patterns and process of this regional pollution and proposed recommendations to control this new type of urban secondary ecological devastation event.
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