Think About This Before Eating Fresh Snow

On a quiet winter day, fresh snow can look downright tempting. It may be fluffy, white and seemingly pure. But before you scoop up a handful and channel your inner child, meteorologist Caitlin Kaiser says that eating snow isn’t always as harmless as it looks.

“Eating snow can be safe,” Kaiser explains, “but the idea that you can safely eat ANY snow is a bit of a winter myth.”

One of the biggest factors is your location. Snow doesn’t just fall through the air; It filters the air.

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“It’s grabbing those contaminants, that air pollution, as it falls," explains Kaiser.

That’s bad news for city snow. Urban areas have more pollution from cars, buses and factories, which means snow falling there is more likely to pick up harmful particles along the way.

Rural areas, with less pollution in the air, are theoretically safer, but even snow that falls far from cities isn’t always pristine. Large-scale weather patterns can transport dust and particles across long distances.

(MORE: What Is Heart Attack Snow?)

“If you think about the jet stream setting up with a trough over the center of the country, it can actually loft dust, let’s say in Texas, all the way up into the north,” Kaiser explains. When snow falls through that air, it can latch onto those particles on the way down.

It might seem logical to grab snow as soon as it starts falling, but Kaiser says the opposite can be true.

“You also don’t want to eat snow that falls in those first few hours,” she explains. “It acts as the first line of defense in purifying the air.”

That early snow is doing the heavy lifting, pulling pollution and tiny particles out of the atmosphere. Snow that falls three to five hours later may contain fewer contaminants, though it’s still not guaranteed to be safe.

Once snow hits the ground, it becomes even riskier.

“You don’t know what was on that ground in the first place,” Kaiser says. “Could fertilizer be in that snow? Could rock salt be in that snow? Could oil from cars and vans that have passed over it be in that snow?”

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None of those are things you want to consume, so that rules out safely eating snow near roads, parking lots, and sidewalks, where oil residue and de-icing chemicals are common.

The same safety rules should apply to animals who decide to take a bite. “You should also be worried if your pets are eating snow in these areas,” Kaiser warns. “Just like they would affect you, they’re going to affect your pets.”

In the end, Kaiser keeps it simple.

“If it looks suspicious, I would probably just not eat it,” she says. “Yellow snow is what we always talk about, but brown snow, black snow, anything that looks disturbed, just stay away from it.”

And if that snow craving still hits?

“Maybe just buy some ice cream at the store,” she adds.