PSoTD

Didn't know this...

Ever since Akron announced late last week that it was going to use a dash of beet juice in its road salt, drivers have been thinking the worst.

The city says nothing will be stained and nothing will be hurt. Not cars, not clothes, not people.

For starters, this stuff is actually a brownish color, not beet red. And it's so diluted that it's barely noticeable.

As for damaging your vehicles — well, the opposite is true. Beets cancel out some of the corrosive properties of salt. With beets beating salt, our clothes, cars and concrete should all last longer.

But the key to the switch is that beet juice allows the salt to work at temperatures as cold as minus-60 degrees, rather than salt's normal low of 17 degrees.

The stuff Akron is dumping on its streets is 5 percent beet juice, 10 percent calcium chloride and 85 percent rock-salt brine.