In this latter respect the specificity of environments that will promote stress corrosion
cracking is significant. It is important to realise that not all corrosive environments promote
the formation of stress corrosion cracks. Those that do will usually be those that do not
promote widespread corrosion in the sense of the attack being spread fairly uniformly over all
exposed surfaces, since, if for no other reason, this is not likely to lead to the geometry of a
crack, which requires that the crack sides remain relatively inactive whilst the tip remains
active to maintain propagation into the metal. Consequently those environments, such as sea
water, that normally promote general corrosion of mild steel, are not likely to promote stress