Abstract Corrosion of steel in portland cement concrete has been found to be very damaging and costly to many countries in the world. It is possible to control this corrosion damage in several ways and one of these is the use of inhibitors. Several electrochemical techniques have been used and this paper illustrates rapid scan polarization as one applied to the study of inhibitors in concrete. Work conducted at the University of Oklahoma studied the effect of oxygen and salt on the behavior of steel in concrete. Investigators at the University of Zulia studied several compounds as possible inhibitors for steel in salt contaminated concrete. Calcium nitrite, calcium nitrate, lead nitrate, zinc oxide, a mixture of calcium nitrite and calcium nitrate, a mixture of calcium nitrate and lead nitrate, and a mixture of lead oxide and calcium nitrate were evaluated as inhibitors for steel in concrete containing 0.5% salt. Slow scan (0.278 mV/sec) polarization curves and rapid scan polarization (14 mV/sec) curves were obtained for all samples. These data indicated it was possible to determine the presence and stability of the passive film from the rapid scan technique. The rapid scan technique was applied to steel in the inhibitor containing cylinders and indicated all but the ZnO had a passivating type behavior. The rapid scan technique should be helpful to investigators in studying inhibition of steel in concrete.