Why you shouldn't eat snow (especially the yellow stuff)

We all know not to eat yellow snow (for obvious reasons) but did you also know that the white stuff is home to all sorts of nasty chemicals? It turns out that snow is a natural sink for environmental pollution along with car exhaust so when you scoop up a mitten full of what appears to be pure white frozen hydration you are actually consuming a toxic snow cone.

Air pollution is a huge killer worldwide with roughly 3.3 million deaths per year from the inhalation of invisible toxic chemicals. The World Health Organization has declared man-made pollution a global public health emergency and it is only getting worse. With a good part of air pollution ending up in snow, it is wise to second guess consuming any kind of snow.

A team of researches at McGill University in Montreal have been using a snow chamber to study how pollutants are absorbed into the snow. They are trying to discover how Organic carbon, benzene, toluene, ethylbenzene, and xylenes are absorbed by the snow and at what levels. So far they have discovered that these toxic particles become trapped within the small ice particles and are dissolved within the pockets of melted snow. This means that snow is an effective sink for pollution and it’s not ideal to consume snow of any kind, yellow or not.


Face shots are excluded of course.