Even before the first proper snowfall in Moscow, there is a gravelly crunch underfoot. It starts in that dim purgatory of late November, after the city has bid farewell to fall and just before the snow flurries become blizzards. The days are short; the moods sour. “We battle against this every winter,” sighs Moscow deputy Irina Galyamina. The battle is against salt — specifically, the kind used to clear the 150 centimeters of snow that falls on Moscow every year.

On first glance, the salt seems like a magic cure. Because of it, there are fewer traffic accidents and fewer falls that result in broken limbs. But for some Moscow residents, the drawbacks are more apparent. Visit any anti-salt group on social media — yes, there are many — for a sampling of their grievances: It turns fresh white snow into a black sludge. It corrodes expensive footwear, car exteriors and pets’ paws. It exacerbates or causes allergies and bronchitis. Most of the complaints are run-of-the-mill; other posts seem dramatic. “I foolishly left home an hour-and-a-half ago without a respirator,” reads one recent post by a user named Catherine Denezhkina. “By the time I reached my destination, a seizure was already in full swing. My muscles were trembling, my legs were weak and my reasoning was clouded.”

St. Petersburg's decision to ban to the substance led to a sharp increase in traffic accidents. Kirill Zykov / MT

But the debate over salt isn’t just unfolding between those who might be dismissed as crabby residents. It has also struck a chord among those in the upper echelons of society. Last week, Moscow deputy Ilya Yashin released a video investigation claiming that the city’s mayor, Sergei Sobyanin, is “poisoning Muscovites.” The real reason for the salt, he said, was so City Hall can award lucrative contracts to the companies that produce it. The city this year increased its spending to six billion rubles ($88.7 million), up a billion from last season and another billion from the year before, Yashin asserted. This comes as official meteorologists said that temperatures in Moscow this winter have hit record highs because of climate change. The corrupt way City Hall awards contracts, Yashin says in the video, means Russia isn’t employing crumbled granite like in Finland, heated roads like in Norway, or just cleaning roads thoroughly like in Germany.

In a column titled “Street Salt As a Universal Symbol of Moscow,” Kirill Kharatyan, an editor for the Vedomosti business daily, argued that the salt is the pinnacle of City Hall’s attempts to brush aside Moscow’s problems. But is there any truth to the harms that detractors say street salts pose? At Pushkin Square in the city center on Tuesday afternoon, everyone seemed to have an opinion. "I've heard people say my car is corroded because of road salt, but I don't know if that's true," said construction worker Shamil Saidov, 46. (A science columnist for an outlet in New Hampshire, a U.S. state which also deals with heavy snowfall, asserts that road salt is indeed the culprit.) Lyuda Kuropyatnikova, 22, complained that her dog’s paws suffer from lesions, sometimes to the point of bleeding. “I rub balm on her paws before we go for walks, but it doesn’t fully help,” she said. Nearby, a policewoman waiting for her German Shepherd to relieve itself took a more ideological stance on the salt issue: “She feels it,” the policewoman said of the dog. “But she’s strong and it doesn’t bother her.” In a 2011 interview, a professor in Moscow State University’s chemistry department, was diplomatic. “[The salt] is not the most dangerous, but also not the safest substance: strong concentrations can irritate the skin,” he said. “It is therefore not advised to walk barefoot on it, and shoes will suffer the same way as from all other salt solutions.”

City Hall is reportedly spending increasing sums on the salt, even though temperatures in Moscow are falling. Dmitry Yermakov / Moskva News Agency