Snow Eating Now Endangered Kid Pleasure

By MELISSA RAYWORTH, For The Associated Press, Medicine & Health / Health

This undated photo provided by Robert Weber shows his son Charlie Lang-Weber, 2, holding a broom stick in the snow outside of their home in Maplewood, N,J. Charlie's mother Kristin Lang says Charlie has ingested his share of the white stuff. (AP Photo/Robert Weber)

(AP) -- To the list of simple childhood pleasures whose safety has been questioned, add this: eating snow. A recent study found that snow - even in relatively pristine spots like Montana and the Yukon - contains large amounts of bacteria.

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Posted by nilbud 03/04/08 18:38

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Housewives, bake a cake.

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Posted by superhuman 03/04/08 19:01

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People really need to get that bacteria are not harmful in general and theres no need to fear them.
Its the marketing ploy of various corporations to sell their stuff by adding some antibiotics and rising panic about bacteria.
All it really does is expose us to various quite chemicals that give us absolutely no benefit and instead pollute our environments.
Whats more those chemicals can pose risk to ourselves as for most of them there is no data which could rule out negative health effects from long exposure.
Current practices test chemicals on animals in high doses but there is no practical way to assess dangers of prolonged exposure to small doses.
IMHO it is really unwise to risk exposure to complex chemicals for which there is insufficient evidence of long time effects. However the industry prefers to go by "anything that isn't proved harmful is fine" which I find quite disturbing especially in situations where theres no proved benefit at all to adding those chemicals.

I suspect that the higher rate of cancer in developed countries is related to the ubiquitous of various chemicals in almost every product.

Don't get me wrong though I don't consider all chemicals dangerous and I know how much we owe to chemistry I just wish humans were more responsible.