What's Really in Urban Snow Piles?
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What horrifying elements are found in urban snow piles?
The show that makes you laugh, think, and occasionally uncomfortable. The Last Show with David Cooper. I live in New York City where it dumps snow today. And for those living in an urban environment that gets snow, here's an all too familiar scene. At first, it's pristine. It's lovely.
Why should you avoid drinking melted urban snow?
It's white. Then it gets shoveled and plowed to the side and gradually turns into an absolutely horrifying pile. It's got road grit.
What contaminants are present in urban snow in New York City?
It looks sort of brown, gray, not to mention people throwing their dog poop in it. I could go on, but first I want to introduce my guest, a geologist and senior technical advisor at Pure Earth. His name is Gordon Binkhorst. Gordon, welcome to the program. Thank you for having me, David. I want to talk urban snow piles. First off, if I melted a chunk of horrifying urban snow into a delicious cocktail, why might I not want to drink that?
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.
So I heard lead, I heard salts, I heard paint chips. What exactly is in the average urban snow pile?
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.
How do bacteria accumulate in urban snow piles?
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.
Didn't something happen with the aqueducts in Rome or something? Like, shouldn't we not be using lead? Didn't we know that like thousands of years ago? Why is there lead paint chips in the snow?
No, we did. We did ban lead in paint in 1978 in this country.
What role does lead play in urban snow contamination?
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 grew up in Canada and I recall the snow piles in Toronto not being quite as bad, but being bad. But the big advice that we had when we were kids is don't eat the yellow snow. Absolutely. I do wonder if eating a bit of pristine yellow snow might be healthier than eating the black urban snow in terms of what actual chemicals are in there.
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.
Keep in mind, Gordon is a scientist, so what we're doing is a scientific inquiry here. So for broadcasting standards, we have broken no rules.
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.
How does urban snow compare to other environmental pollutants?
But again, who's drinking that black, icky snow? First of all, it's usually frozen, right? So you're not exactly going to scoop it up or even put it into an ice snowball. So drinking it or ingesting it is probably a low probability. And to be honest, there's a lot of salt in there. And all that salt is also not very healthy for you. And in New York, when it all melts, where does it go? It goes into the East River and the Hudson River predominantly.
Some of the most pristine, clean waterways maybe on the planet.
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Chapters
8 chapters
1
What horrifying elements are found in urban snow piles?
0:03–0:28
2
Why should you avoid drinking melted urban snow?
0:28–0:37
3
What contaminants are present in urban snow in New York City?
0:37–1:50
4
How do bacteria accumulate in urban snow piles?
1:50–2:34
5
What role does lead play in urban snow contamination?
2:34–3:40
6
How does urban snow compare to other environmental pollutants?
3:40–4:39
7
Why do people neglect to clean up after their dogs in the snow?
4:39–5:10
8
Are urban snow piles uniquely contaminated compared to other urban areas?
5:10–8:52
Speakers
3 identifiedMore from The Last Show with David Cooper
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