Snow What?

     I've been having a lot of fun reading excerpts from Ken Jennings' book Because I Said So.  One final warning that I'll comment on today is the one we have all heard as we were growing up:

"Don't eat snow -- It'll make you sick!"

 

     Findings published in Science in 2008 revealed that some snowflakes form around a "seed" of bacteria such as Pseudomonas syringae -- which led to "Why snow might be killing your kid" teasers in newscasts.  But Pseudomonas syringae causes a fatal disease in beans and tomatoes, not people.  And the human stomach is acidic enough to kill bacteria in snow.

 

     However, there are worse things in the air -- such as sulfates, nitrates, even lead --and snow might contain any of them.  Catching flakes on your tongue is no big deal, but any kid putting away buckets of the white stuff may want to ease up.

 

     Whew!  I was worried there for a minute that catching those snowflakes on my tongue as a kid was going to do me in half a century later.