— by Lin McNulty —
Fog seal is not, as I had suspected, a coating that is sprayed on to our local seal population to make them more visible, and therefore safer, during foggy weather.
Nope. It’s official definition is:
“A light spray application of dilute asphalt emulsion used primarily to seal existing asphalt surfaces to reduce raveling and enrich dry and weathered surfaces. It can also be used as a color coating and as a paint striping surface preparation.”
It is a very light application of asphalt in the form of a diluted emulsion of asphalt sprayed onto an asphalt or other surface. A sort of black fog which is sprayed on after our roadways have been chip sealed.
The main aim is for the emulsion to run into the interstices between stones and coat the asphalt part of the layer.
The emulsion should not hang up on the tops of the stone but flow between them. Thus the seal can be renewed and the stones are not made too slippery.
You should now feel better about the strange traffic patterns in Eastsound this week.
Love your funny words Lin!
Thanks, Lin…saved me looking it up.
Time to grow up, Orcas! Public Works is still in the mentality that we’re a poor,rural community that has to pave our roads in the cheapest, roughest, ugly way possible. Time to get together, Lance Evans and Rick Hughes, and figure out that these tourists have money, expect better, and that there’s a lot at stake here.
From the Ohio Department of Transportation website: “Chip seals are used only on low traffic routes, less than 2500 vehicles per day.” There is no way chip seals should even be used in Eastsound; Main Street, North Beach Road and Prune Alley all have more than 2500 vehicles per day! The County also needs to take into account how much business that Eastsound merchants lost during this chip seal/fog seal fiasco!
Use of chipseal in Eastsound is just one example of the many challenges facing a rural county when it attempts to address the needs of an unincorporated village serving as a commercial center for Orcas Island.
BTW, if memory serves, N. Beach Rd. and Main Street were paved w/ asphalt, not chipseal, when the curbs and sidewalks were installed twenty years ago. I haven’t been aware that chipseal was a recognised topping for asphalt paving.
Asphalt is a residue of petroleum distillation. It contains a significant concentration of carcinogenic PAHs, but they tend mostly to be immobilized once the asphalt emulsion solidifies. Volatile PAHs and other toxic compounds are released during the application process, however, and OSHA has identified exposure to asphalt fumes as a cause of “headache, skin rash, fatigue, reduced appetite, throat and eye irritation, cough, and skin cancer” (www.osha.gov/SLTC/asphaltfumes/).