Gordon Binkhorst

Well, let's start with the snow that's falling right now, David, because the snow right now is pretty pristine.

And if you collected that and tested it, that you wouldn't find all that horrible stuff you've been discussing.

However, as it sits there and more and more salt that the city puts on, the sand that the city puts on, the dog poop, the dirt, the grime, the paint flecks, everything that gets mixed in and it gets concentrated as that snow melts into that black, disgusting, ugly stuff that we see.

Well, all of that and a lot of bacteria to boot.

I mean, the city puts down literally millions of pounds of salt to clear our roadways, which we're very thankful for.

They also put down sand from whatever source they get it for to help with traction.

And then there's more sort of like, I don't want to call them naturally occurring, but for New York, it's kind of natural.

It's a dirty city.

We have dirt and, you know, and grime and grease from cars, old leaded gasoline deposits in the soil, paint flecks that come off and get spread everywhere.

There's a natural, very high urban lead concentration in soils in New York.

No, we did.

We did ban lead in paint in 1978 in this country.

Yet there is still plenty of historic paint out there with lead in it on buildings and bridges and exterior and interior.

And it's a continual battle.

And our kids still were being lead exposed and come down with lead poisoning because of the paint.

Here we're talking just what gets deposited in the snow.

I'm not going to recommend it, David, but I would hazard to say that's okay because if you get stuck on a boat, they say you can drink your urine for hydration purposes.

Yeah, so not recommending it, but yes, I think you'd be better off.

And, you know, the levels of lead that they found are in the hundreds of parts per billion, which is about, you know, 10 times the drinking water standard.

But again, who's drinking that black, icky snow?