Dmitry Labutin doesn't know what Moscow authorities dump on the city's streets to melt the ice, but he doesn't like it.
"My car gets really dirty, and it's hard to wash it," Labutin said.
The 40-year-old driver also complained that he had to change his ordinary winter tires to studded tires to prevent his car from sliding on the streets, which turn dirty and slippery because of liquid de-icing chemicals.
When the temperature hovers near freezing, the liquid that city authorities generously spray over the capital's streets turns jelly-like. Passing cars spray its particles into the air, and a sticky goo covers the road and everything that comes into contact with it.
The driving experience is completely different in the Moscow region, where salt and sand is used to de-ice roads. "It's clean there," Labutin said.
Moscow authorities have clocked up decades of experience de-icing roads. But despite all the money that they pump into chemicals, they have failed to make the roads ice-free and clean. Matters came to a head late last month when the Natural Resources Ministry complained to the Prosecutor General's Office that the de-icing chemicals used in Moscow might pose a threat to people's health and damage cars because they have not been approved by the ministry's environmental watchdog, the Federal Service for Environmental, Technological and Atomic Inspection.
The problem stems from a decision by City Hall in late 2009 to approve two separate plans for cleaning winter streets, said Natural Resources Ministry spokesman Timur Chernyshov. One of the plans has passed a review by the environmental watchdog, but city authorities are cleaning the streets under the other plan, which uses different de-icing chemicals and calls for larger amounts than in the approved plan, Chernyshov said.
"These chemicals may be good, but we don't know because they haven't passed the review," he said.
While the approved plan allows city authorities to use 150 grams of liquid chemicals or 80 grams of solid chemicals per square meter of ground, the unapproved plan allows 424 grams of liquid chemicals or 208 grams of solid chemicals per square meter, Chernyshov said.
The Prosecutor General's Office and City Hall's department responsible for de-icing had not replied by Monday to faxed questions about the issue sent on Jan. 11.
But Sergei Golubkov, a professor at Dmitry Mendeleyev University of Chemical Technology of Russia, said Moscow residents had little cause for concern because tests have discovered that current de-icing chemicals caused "minimal" harm to people's health, the environment and cars.
The chemicals contain "anti-corrosion" elements and substances that "minimize the harmful effect for shoes," Golubkov said.
People interviewed in Moscow's streets, however, said the chemicals have caused trouble.
Sergei Ivanov, 58, a driver at a private firm, said his car was "rusting little by little."
The manager of a car wash on Sushchyovsky Val near the Savyolovskaya metro station said de-icing chemicals have made it more difficult to wash cars. "Cars are harder to wash clean because of the chemicals," the manager, Ivan Nofif, said. "We need more cleaning liquid, and spend more money on it."
A 34-year-old housewife, Yulia Boiko, said her Turkish black leather boots were damaged by de-icing chemicals. "White stains appeared on them. They became deformed and shrank," Boiko said, pausing as she pushed her baby in a carriage on a sidewalk.
Marina Orlova, a spokeswoman for the city's communal services department in charge of buying chemicals for the city's roads, said she had no data on how much the city spent on de-icing chemicals because district authorities bought them out of their own budgets.
In Moscow, chemicals are only used on roads, while sidewalks and courtyards are covered with stone chips.
Despite the harmful effects of de-icing chemicals, few experts saw any alternative. Alexander Pikulenko, who monitors the car industry for Ekho Moskvy radio and has traveled in a number of European countries by car, said stone chips could be used on the roads. Pikulenko cited the experience of Finland and Sweden, which see a lot of snowfall in the winter.
Oleg Mitvol, prefect of Moscow's Northern Administrative District, shrugged off the notion of using stone chips, saying they would block street gutters and cost more than de-icing chemicals.
In the early 1990s, Moscow authorities de-iced roads with a mixture of salt and sand, which filled gutters and led to flooding on Moscow roads.
Technical salt was widely used between 1994 and 1999, leading to short circuits in the electric cables of public transportation.
Last January, Mayor Yury Luzhkov ordered tests of pre-heated de-icing chemicals on Moscow's roads in a bid to reduce pollution and cut spending on the clearing of roads. But the idea was dropped after the tests revealed that pre-heated de-icing chemicals created a thick fog on the roads, which would have complicated the movement of cars and increased the number of road accidents, said Golubkov, who helped oversee the tests.
Several sidewalks in the city center are heated from underground, including a small area around the Mayor's Office on Tverskaya Ulitsa and Manezh Square. But the cost of heating all of the city's sidewalks and streets would be too high.
Chemicals are used to de-ice roads in some European countries and in the United States. In Boston, dry technical salt, or NaCl, is used, said Orlova, of the communal services department. In Germany, CaCl is used, said Pikulenko, of Ekho Moskvy.
Several Moscow residents said they saw no alternative to chemicals. "If only they poured less and cleared more," Ivanov mused, sitting in his black Ford Mondeo parked on a Moscow street.