Corrosion will cost the US economy over $1 trillion in 2015

$276 Billion

That's the number that we quote in our summer ASM teachers camps PowerPoints as being the annual cost of corrosion in the United States.

Of course, that's a number from a 2002 survey by the National Association of Corrosion Engineers (NACE). That's almost a decade and a half old at this point.

So I went hunting for a more current number.

G2MT laboratories - out of Houston and describing themselves as 'not just a lab: the next generation of metallurgy' - posted a fairly comprehensive analysis that says the number in 2015 dollars is more like $1 Trillion in annual corrosion costs in the US. The analysis goes on to explore those direct - and also indirect - costs.