You and Your Lovely BOD

This spring, take care when discharging that pink stuff into the aquatic ecosystem

By Greg LeBreton

This is always a sad time of year. The leaves fall, the masts come down and boats are hauled from the water. You tarped the boat, took the batteries home, bedded down the dock fenders and coiled the lines for the last time this year. The heads have all been treated with RV antifreeze and your engine gulped several gallons of the pink stuff too. Everything is ready for winter. All that’s left to do is wait until spring, when you’ll turn the key, press the starter button and fire that baby up again. Well, that’s what I use to do.

The problem is you forgot about your BOD – not your slender youthful figure, your biochemical oxygen demand. You might want to pay attention to you and your boat’s BOD a bit more this spring, particularly when it comes to discharging that pink stuff in the toilets and engine.

What is that stuff again? Boaters around the Great Lakes have bought massive volumes of pink propylene glycol this fall to protect their water systems from freezing. We should feel good about this. Propylene glycol is less toxic than the closely related molecule ethylene glycol, which is used in engine coolant.

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