BY LESLIE CORONA
“We enjoy as many clean flakes as we can catch on our tongues. The kids run around trying for hours! Once it lands on the ground, though, it’s off-limits.”
@PIXIELANESTACYLEVY
“We ate fresh snow drizzled with cooked maple syrup at my grandparents’ house.”
@SHAR_THOMPSON
“The fresher the better! I have eaten it all my life. I feel calm just thinking about it.”
@K_MONEY01
“My kindergarten teacher insisted that snowflakes form around a speck of dirt, so if you eat snow, you’re eating dirt. Not sure if that’s true, but the thought of it has always made eating snow unappealing to me.”
@RACHELMAYESALLEN
“To me it’s not safe. You might get sick.”
@MAIACRUZ803
“No, no, no! Unless you want a mouthful of dirt and chemicals.”
@RICHPEDINEPR
A taste? Maybe. A feast? Definitely not. You know to avoid any that’s yellow (pee!), black (car exhaust), or just not white. Green or red can be a sign of algae, adds Michael Muccilli, winter program coordinator for the National Weather Service. But even white snow could have invisible stuff lurking in it, especially in urban areas, says David Robinson, PhD, a climatologist and geography professor at Rutgers University. “As snow falls through the atmosphere, it’s a good scavenger of pollution that might be up there, like particulates from fossil fuel emissions, and it could absorb some of that,” he says. (Who wants to eat pollution?!) Muccilli also says blizzards can blow dirt, further grossifying falling snow. Plus, piles sitting around can be tainted with salt and chemicals.
What about pure white, undisturbed, backyard country snow from a not-too-blustery storm? “It’s pretty safe to eat it in those conditions in small quantities,” says Noah Molotch, PhD, an associate professor at the University of Colorado Boulder’s Institute of Arctic and Alpine Research, who suggests limiting your snacking to one bite. Cory Fisher, DO, a family medicine physician at Cleveland Clinic in Rocky River, Ohio, agrees that the risk of pollutant exposure from backyard snow is “quite low.” Just be sure to keep an eye on the time. “After an hour, you don’t know what animals have tracked through it, what has blown on it, and so on,” Muccilli says. The point: Hurry up and go play!
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