Spring means melting snow -- and pollution

SCARBOROUGH, Ontario, March 28 (UPI) -- Spring is in the air and so is the annual snowmelt -- carrying a dark side of pollution, a Canadian researcher says.

"During the winter months, contaminants accumulate in the snow," University of Toronto Scarborough environmental chemist Torsten Meyer said. "When the snow melts, these chemicals are released into the environment at high concentrations."

In a special temperature-controlled laboratory at UTSC, Meyer creates large baths of fresh snow already tainted with organic contaminants. This one-of-a-kind setup allows Meyer to slowly melt his "dirty" snow, collect the melt-water and track which chemicals emerge from the snowpack and when, a university release reported Monday.

A worrying surprise has come out of his experiments, he said.

"One of the main findings is that there is a peak contaminant flush at the very beginning of the melt," he said.

In other words, Meyer said, with the advent of spring comes a deluge of pollution.

By the time spring snow has turned black with muck and grime, many harmful chemicals -- including those from pesticides, car exhaust, telecommunications wiring insulation, water repellent clothing, paints or coatings -- may have already seeped out of the snow and into the surrounding ground water or surface water, Meyer said.

The findings have real-world implications, such as how municipalities choose their snow dump sites. Cities and towns should be very careful to select well-contained sites to protect against that early flush of pollutants, he said.