What Corrosion Costs Canada; Or, Can We Afford To Ignore Corrosion?

In this paper, the annual direct cost of corrosion in Canada is estimated to be approximately $41 billion. The figure does not include the indirect (user) costs of corrosion, sometimes referred to as social costs, which would essentially double the amount. Also, corrosion is shown to be a major contributor to environmental pollution, including when it results in the leakage of hazardous materials from pipelines, vessels and nuclear reactors. Industrial accidents caused by corrosion kill and injure hundreds of people annually. At present, corrosion is at the core of safety and risk analysis in several major industries such as energy generation, oil/gas production and transportation, chemical processing and petroleum refining. With the recent steam pipeline explosion during rush hour in New York killing one man, the collapse of the bridge in Minneapolis killing 13 people and another two years ago in Montreal when 5 people were killed, infrastructure corrosion is increasingly being acknowledged as a public safety concern.