Saturday, January 10, 2009

Eating Snow: Is it Safe?

(K- making a snow angel in our front yard after the March 2008 snowstorm.)


This post all began with a twitter post (or whatever you call them because I'm so not that cool) that was talking about Snowscream. I thought, HOW GROSS! Then, I started to research. You know what? I found completely conflicting information.

WGN out of Chicago gave us this information. They say that snow is bad. Eating snow is really, really bad. But, then they are in the city, near airports, and heaven only knows what is swirling through the air.

Dick Goddard, local weather guru at Fox 8 Cleveland, says that snow is "nature's vacuum cleaner." Personally, what Dick Goddard says makes sense to me. He says that as the snow falls, it cleans the air of particulate matter floating around. If you have crub in the air and acid rain as we do in the only pristine air of NE Ohio, I don't know if you'll be wanting to dine on snow anytime soon. He claims that in the winters, he used to make ice cream with snow with his daughter. A few years or so ago, they ended up very ill from their snow ice cream. He swears that he won't do it again. He always has a bit on the weather every year cautioning folks NOT to make ice cream with snow.

I kept on reading and found at Eco Child's Play their thoughts. Basically, licking snow off of gloves is okay, but making an entire meal of it is probably not the best idea.

At Safety Issues, they've been told that there is not much need for worry and their are no clinical reports about children getting ill from eating snow.

So, are you grossed out by eating snow? I mean, I'm sure it is more a location thing. Still, K- likes to stick her tongue out and collect flakes, but I don't know that I want her making a lunchtime snack out of the white stuff. So as we are under an official Winter Storm Warning until Sunday at 1 AM we'll be making snowmen, but no snowscream.

2 comments:

AudreyO said...

I've always lived in CA, so have never had to deal with snow. I love the photos others post though of both kids and animals out playing.

My kids have always loved to jump in puddles, splash in puddles and yes even stick their tongues out to catch rain.

GERBEN said...

Well I remember being a kid & growing up in Oklahoma & having snowscream. It seems that we use to get more snow than we do now. But anyway, when I was a kid my mom use to make snowscream. I never thought about it being gross, but of course I was a kid & not too many kids are going to turn down a fun creamy treat made from snow! I don’t remember ever getting sick from it & like I said, we don’t seem to get the snow that we use to when I was growing up.