Why I’m glad I don’t live in Iceland.

Have you ever experienced that weird phenomenon when you say something optimistic and then the opposite happens?
*Raises hand*
Yeah. When I said I felt better, I meant better than I was feeling before. But not best.
My virus/cold is still lingering. Maybe it thinks I want it to stay…
Dear Cold: as much as I appreciate your willingness to stay and keep me company, I think you’ve overstayed your welcome. Thank you kindly for visiting, and I wish you all the best on your life’s journeys, wherever they may take you. Sincerely, Isa.


Today I was thinking about road salt.

The stuff they pour on the roads to keep the main traffic routes drivable in the wintertime.


Did you know that in Iceland, they’ve been using road salt in their food for the past 13 years?
Couriermail.com
“The industrial salt has been sold asfood salt by mistake, Icelandic officials said yesterday.
"The salt is not safe because foreign entities can be found in it, for example rocks, metals and other things that are filtered out of table salt," said Reykjavik Health Protection Authority official Oskar Isfeld Sigurdsson to the daily Frettabladid.
Olgerdin Egill Skallagrimsson, a wholesale importer and beverage producer, imported the industrial salt, which is used to de-ice roads or in chemical production, from Denmark.
It has been used in food production by dozens of Icelandic meat producers, fish producers and bakeries for 13 years, Olgerdin said, but not sold directly to consumers.
The bags of salt were clearly marked as containing industrial salt, but Olgerdin chief executive Andri Thor Gudmundsson said company employees did not react.
"We were not aware that the salt was not certified for food production. We knew it was for industrial use, but thought it was for the food industry," he told Icelandic public broadcaster RUV.
"Olgerdin and the companies that used the salt in food production have admitted negligence and mistakes because the salt was not stamped 'food grade' and was not certified for use for the food industry. Olgerdin apologises for that mistake," it said in a statement issued on Monday.
MS Iceland Dairies, the country's largest dairy producer, said it had recalled five products from stores because the salt figured among their ingredients.
Health officials said the industrial salt was "not safe and should not be on the market."
"In the production of table salt there are requirements about the handling and storage of the product that are not required in regard to industrial salt.
"It is stored in different conditions and there are no requirements on checking for foreign bodies in the salt because it is not intended for human consumption," said Mr Sigurdsson.”
Whew! Kinda disturbing, to find out you’ve been eating road salt for 13 years..



Did you know that some places are now using beet juice on the roads?

Places like Niles, IL.
From niles.patch.com-
“The Niles Public Services department pre-treats roadways with salt brine, calcium chloride and surprisingly, beet juice, to prevent snow from bonding to the pavement…”
“When weather conditions call for beet juice to be applied, two specialized trucks pre-treat the roads with the agent that contains an organic product that “helps give the salt brine some tackiness,” Pilat said.The beet product helps give the melting product a longer residual time on the roadways.

“When snow falls and it hits the product, the snow starts to melt,” Pilat said. “It won’t melt all the snow that falls, but it stops the snow from bonding to the pavement, so when we hit it with the snowplow, the snow is loose and flies off the road.”

The organic product does not have to come from the purple produce—some municipalities use a corn product— but using it saves the village money and makes the salt less corrosive, which is helpful to the environment, he said.”

Cool huh?

Go Beets!

I don’t like road salt.

Would you like to know why?

Because it eats into the undercarriage of automobiles and causes RUST!

And the rust in turn eats up your car till there’s nothing left but a pile of crumbly brown stuff.

Its really all the snow’s fault.

If it didn’t snow, we wouldn’t need salt.

But I don’t care.

I love the fresh, cold, soft, pure, delicate snow.

Falling in layers upon layers.

Then melting

Then refreezing so it’s hard on top!

Then I can go running across it and hear it crunching under my feet.

And go skating outside as the snow is falling.

I want to go ice skating.

Right now.

Unfortunately, I have other things that need doing.

I should go do them now.

El fin.