Mothers and elementary teachers no longer have to worry about telling kids not to eat snow as long as the snow is fresh, according to specialist in air and water quality.

"I used to eat snow and nothing bad ever happened to me," said Kevin Brown, the director for the Division of Drinking Water for the state of Utah. "If it's fresh snow, I can't imagine that there would be anything wrong with it, unless it's come into contact. You know, it goes back to the old saying, 'don't eat yellow snow' type of thing."

Steven Packham, a toxicologist for the division of air quality, said the real problem with "bad" snow in when it is contaminated by other creatures, not by air pollution. The pristine snow that has just fallen through the air and landed on the ground is not going to be unusually dangerous or unhealthy, he said.

"If it was just air pollution on the snow or in the snow, it would really be no different than what we usually swallow," Packham said.

Despite this, mothers and educators stick to what they have been told about not eating snow and pass along the myth to their children.

"Most moms would say no, you can't eat snow," said Carolyn Andrews, a mother of five and a professor of infant development at BYU.

She said her 6-year-old daughter recently tried to eat snow and received a lecture on why not to.

"It comes through the dirty atmosphere," Andrews said. "It comes in contact with all sorts of lovely things on the ground."

After explaining the situation, she said her daughter caught the realization and was repulsed by the idea of eating snow.

Andrews said she would eat snow as a child in the country, where the air was clean.

"But the thought of it in the city with air pollution, cars, someone walking by and spitting in it," she said. "There are so many things you can't see. Maybe I'm a germ freak."

Jennifer Allen, a mother and former elementary school teacher in American Fork, told about one of the experiments she did with her first-grade students to teach them about water. The experiment included taking two samples of snow, one cup from snow that was falling, and the other cup from snow on the ground. The cups were brought into the classroom until the snow melted.

"Usually there are things floating around [in the cups] and the kids say 'eww ... gross,'" Allen said. "Sometimes there are pollutants that you just can't see. There isn't any great harm, I just don't encourage it."

Bob Dalley, the section manager for the Air-monitoring Center, pointed out that snow cleans some of the pollutants out of the air. He said he tries not to let his grandchildren eat snow because it can't be good for them.

He said his colleague Packham had a different slant: "He [Packham] said, 'Well that's what your nose does. Your nose cleans out some of the air pollutions and then it goes down your throat and into your stomach.' So, I don't know what the difference is."

Packham explained the body's filtering system takes care of air pollution that it collects in the form of mucus and sends it into the stomach.

"It wouldn't be dangerous to eat snow because our nose is doing basically the same thing many times a day," he said.



Copyright Brigham Young University 23 Nov 2003