I Hate Road Salt!!!

It was amazing yesterday to see everything coated white at school, not with snow but with road salt, probably mixed in with calcium and magnesium salts as well. It makes sense that as a car lover, I hate road salt, for the substance destroys automobiles to no end. You can easily fix upholstery, rebuild an engine, but once rust gets started on a car the fix is difficult and the motor vehicle is never the same, just like a person with cancer. The use of salt -- and now the even more corrosive beet juice -- solves several problems for the state. Perhaps auto safety, perhaps not if folks had to slow down. It also keeps the economic wheels turning, as people have no excuse to get to their jobs. Capitalism marches on! Salt also does its best to reduce the "Used Car Problem," as planned obsolescence is catalyzed by folks who don't want to drive around with rusted out door bottoms and rocker panels. A car like that does not speak well of you.

There are significant environmental reasons to curtail the use of salt, as individual homes' water supplies have been contaminated in the past, vegetation threatened, and even human health concerns raised. A cursory read of the New York Times historical archive suggests that there have been plenty of naysayers concerning salt use on roads over years, and the defense of its use by no less than the Salt Institute, a trade organization, located in Alexandria, Virginia.

In the end my dislike of salt roads will have little (really no) impact on its continued use, but I repeat -- I hate road salt, and its substitutes if they are corrosive. I guess my recourse is put up with it, or move to California or Arizona.