Icy Roads? Beet Juice Just the Right Tonic

Road workers in the Chicago area are shaking up their winter ice-busting cocktail with an odd new mixer: beet juice. Sanitation officials are pleased with the combination, which reduces the necessary rock salt (harmful to plants and water supplies) by up to 30% and is effective at temperatures far lower than salt alone, the Chicago Tribune reports.

Runoff from de-iced roads is a problem in the area, damaging plants and radically increasing salt levels in waterways. Even so, environmentalists are wary of the reduced-salt mixtures, which “may have new, as well as unknown, effects of their own.” Another wrinkle: Beet juice ups the price of de-icing compounds, and may cause “some sort of film on windshields.” (More Chicago stories.)