They clear the snow with their plows while applying salt to melt the ice on the roads. Without these efforts, most of us would literally be stuck in our homes. Rock salt is necessary as it is the ...

But there is a point where rock salt can become ineffective, causing it not to melt snow or ice as it normally would. How Stuff Works states that salt melts ice by lowering water’s freezing point.

like calcium chloride and magnesium chloride, their higher cost—three times that of traditional salt—restricts their application to environmentally sensitive areas. For now, rock salt is still ...