Q: What kind of substance is applied to the local roads during freezing weather? Is the liquid mixture salt or something else? What kind of damage can it cause to cars?
A: Rust. That’s the one word answer. As to what the substance is, that answer is more complicated. But rather than turn this into a chemistry lesson, let’s take a short trip back in time, to the Great Seattle Salt Debate of 2008.
Maybe you remember; the city of Seattle had decided to abandon salt as a treatment for icy and snowy roads, committing instead to using sand. And then the city was hit by the biggest snowfall in a decade. Many roads were impassable, leading to a collision that made international news when two buses full of students slid down a hill and crashed through a concrete barricade, the front quarter of one bus dangling over I-5 thirty feet below. (By magic, luck, physics or divine intervention there were no serious injuries.) In the aftermath, the city switched back to using salt, or other salt-ish chemicals. Some folks speculate that the mayor’s no-salt stance cost him the next election.
Continue reading “If It Melts Ice, It Probably Rusts Your Car”
