Is it safe to use ice melts (sidewalk salt) around pets?
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M$5 Answers
"Chemicals can get stuck to or embedded in your pet’s paws and at the very least dry them out or even cause them to crack and bleed, especially when your animals track them back inside and the chemicals can heat up to 175 degrees."
According to National Animal Poison Control (800 548 2423) an alternative to the salts is sand or kitty litter.
There is also a product called Safe Paw Ice Melter That is safe for dogs.
http://www.doggienews.com/2004/12/safe-paw-ice-melter-is-safe-for-pets.htm
Petco carries an ice melt for dogs
http://www.petco.com/product/108258/PETCO-Ice-Melt-for-Pets.aspx?&cm_ven=GoogleBase&cm_cat=Dog&cm_pla=PETCO&cm_ite=1182269&CAWELAID=289260359
Then there is Paw Thaw
http://www.petfooddirect.com/store/product1.asp?pf_id=1043302&cm_mmc_o=2mHlCjCVdKCjCVdK2tzEEwklCjCWR2RJVRW&zmam=90031077&zmas=13&zmac=74&zmap=1043302
and Petastic Ice Melt
http://www.petfooddirect.com/store/product1.asp?pf_id=1043302&cm_mmc_o=2mHlCjCVdKCjCVdK2tzEEwklCjCWR2RJVRW&zmam=90031077&zmas=13&zmac=74&zmap=1043302
You can leave an optional "tip" with Mahalo's virtual currency, Mahalo Dollars. If you are asking a difficult question that might require some research, or if you'd like a wide variety of feedback, a higher tip often leads to more answers to your question.
M$
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M$Check this stuff out:
http://www.safepaw.com/
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M$
Dog's don't die with that stuff. Most dogs will be cautious of things that taste terrible to them. If they eat any of it, they will hate it. My dog did the first time she tasted it.
We used that cheap stuff and none of the puppies died.
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M$
Beni, he didn't ask about the effect of salt, but ice melts. Ice melts are a combination of chemicals that are designed to melt ice better than plain salt.
Interesting links. As I don't know what kind of road salt is being used in the US, I can't answer the question. But I'd like to mention that this question has been a big issue in my country (Switzerland), being discussed over and over again. Back in the 70's, municipalities have made excess use of road salt in winter. Due to environmental concerns, it was increasingly replaced by road gritting in the 80's.
However, more recent research has shown that actually, using road salt is more enviromental than road gritting. And over the past years, road gritting has now again been replaced by road salt.
The effects of road salt on pets has always been a minor concern. But this may be connected to the fact that here, road salt consists of nothing but sodium chloride (NaCl) aka table salt. There are no added chemicals. It's exactly the same except that its packaging is not according to regulations for food processing.
The main disadvantages of using sodium chloride is corrosion of metals and that excess use of it may change the concentration in the ground and increase its pH value which can damage plants.
On the other hand there is the big advantage that sodium chloride is water soluble. Therefore, it can easily and naturally be removed and diluted. And in low concentrations it's not a toxic or synthetic substance.
Road grit (made of grinded rocks) itself would be of no environmental concern. But research has shown that after being removed from the road, it is highly contaminated with oils, tar, etc. and has to be disposed as hazardous waste.
Several studies (all in german) doing an environmental life cycle assessment showed that modest use of road salt is the more environmental solution. They found that the bad effects of road salt are neutralized quite quickly except in places where there's just too much salt for the ground to cope with, e.g. in the green strip between highway lanes.
Regarding pets, the effect of salt was seen less hazardous than expected. Pets' paws may be irritated but supposedly there are more problems caused by pointy grit than by salt which can be simply washed off.
The current policy in Switzerland is to reduce the use of salt as much as possible and except for highways, not to clean the streets completely. Road salt is being used mainly on roads and whenever possible not on sidewalks. Not just animals' paws are affected, people were also complaining about leather shoes being damaged.
But as mentioned before, we may have a different situation here as our road salt is identical with table salt and doesn't contain any alternative salts or chemicals.
Some of the alternative 'pet-friendly' or 'car-friendly' products which contain no sodium chloride but other substances lowering the melting point of water are banned here for environmental reasons. They may not have some of the corrosive effects but they have the same effect as excess use of nitrogen fertilizers and they are much harder to remove from the environment as they are partly being absorbed by plants. I don't know the ingredients of the products you mentioned, but I would be hesitant to use them. They may be less irritating to dogs' paws but bad for plants, humans and the environment. The good thing with sodium chloride is that it's a water-soluble and very common substance that we all have in our bodies and use in our kitchen. We know how to handle it can be washed off. I would guess a dog whose paws are irritated knows or learns quickly that it can get rid of the salt just by walking a few steps in snow.