Does road salt damage paint

Every winter, our quaint, Midwestern town of Kansas City spends $20 million and employs anywhere from 100 to 200 salt trucks to de-ice the roads. That’s a lot of dough and hard work to ensure we commuters can drive safely. Yet, as necessary as road salt is for drivers’ safety, it’s a certifiable, rust-raving catastrophe for vehicles. Short of becoming a hermit or moving to a warmer area, you can’t avoid road salt—but you can reduce the chances of it damaging your car.

Why does road salt damage vehicles?

It’s all science, really.

Road salt—typically sodium chloride—mixes with ice—solid dihydrogen monoxide—to lower the molecules’ freezing point and melt ice and snow. But as sodium and chlorine ions disengage to do their oxidation jobs, they become food for metals, particularly iron and steel. The addition of free hydrogen molecules, as well as other chemicals, only increases the corrosive effect road salt has on a vehicle’s frame. Continue Reading…