Dirty Road Snow

Snow melt is a great time to visualize the pollution caused by cars. When you see the filthy slush on the sides of the roads, do you ever stop to think, what is all that black stuff? Is it just dirt and sand? Well, the sidewalks don't ever get so disgusting from the bottoms of shoes, not even close. Seems the filth must be a combination of engine oil and gasoline droplets combined with rubbings from tires maybe mixed portions of the asphalt that are continually breaking up. And what kinds of chemical additives and heavy metals are in all these pollutants?

I don't know how hazardous all this is in the snow to us who walk and play in it, but when you realize that this stuff is all normally stirred-up and mixed in the air around roadways and in our lungs and then it is later washed into our storm sewer system and into the Mill Creek River, then you can start to see the real environmental damage done by car traffic.