Snow Ingestion may endanger your Health

What can be more enticing than to go outside and have an old-fashioned snowball fight? It is perhaps considered one of those little joys in life, the kind of thing that can screw a smile on your face during the cold months of winter. However, a recent study proved that snow ingestion may endanger your health.

The author of the study doesn’t want to alarm parents but advises against ingesting the snow. One might ask how a mouth-full of the clean show can put our lives at risk. Well, it would seem that snow is not as immaculate as one might think.

A recent environmental study has proved that snow falling in urban areas might act like sponges for the car’s toxic emissions. More specifically, snow particles are capable of capturing the gases coming out of our exhaust pipes. And might we add that these emissions are not only toxic but carcinogenic as well.

So, parents, when letting your child outside to play, be careful when his around snow. Snow may be harmless in pollution-free areas, but in the big city, snow is packed with toxic agents that may harm your child’s health.

Doctor Parisa Aryia, a professor of chemistry and also an environmental research, was in charge of the snow study. In the paper published on the 21^st of December in a journal entitled Environmental Sciences: Processes and Impacts, the chemistry teacher, who is also a mother, warned the public about the dangers of ingesting snow in urban areas.

The researcher also pointed out that snow particles are not only filled with harmful elements, but that there is also the possibility of snow particles to interact with other compounds found in the atmosphere. This process can generate any number of toxic elements.

In order to see if indeed snow can be harmful to our wellbeing, the doctor set up a little lab experiment. In a testing chamber filled with snow, she introduced exhaust fumes. In a couple of minutes, the snow found inside the vat was capable of absorbing the toxic fumes.

This can be good for the environment, but not for our health if the snow should be ingested. After the experiment was over, the doctor measured the level of toxic elements found inside the snow.

Her conclusion was that ingestion may endanger your health. Results showed that the snow inside the vat had a high concentration compounds found in exhaust gases, such as toluene, xylene, benzene and ethylbenzene, all of them being deem as harmful for the human body.

Playing in the snow is a great way of having fun but snow ingestion may endanger your health.

Photo credits:www.pixabay.com