Heavenly Paradise@AdelineAng.com

I was anticipating the test results for snow today. Carefully, I removed the trays (where a mixture of melted snow and test reagent was kept) from the 35 °C incubator, after one day of incubation. Shockingly, the test for microbiological parameters of the snow turned out to be negative, i.e. it’s safe to consume!! In other words, snow is tested negative for coliforms and E. coli. Thus, snow shouldn’t make us sick immediately. Hooray! It wasn’t a bad decision to have A.B.C. after all!

For the purpose of this test, I used dirty snow (brownish, from the snowbank) as a control, and “clean” snow (untouched, purely white) as a test. There is one coliform present in the former, and nothing found in the “clean” snow. The reason for having a control is to prove that coliform and/or E. coli can indeed be present in snow, since microbiology test for water is not supposed to be frozen. Under the cold temperature, bacteria may not survive.

“Clean” snow is tested negative for coliform and E. coli (top), and one coliform (a yellow spot pointed by black arrow) is found in the dirty snow.

Having said that, this conclusion is drawn solely from the microbiology perspectives. Other contamination, such as organic, inorganic, metals, and nutrients could be involved. Basically, even though it seems like the snow is safe to consume, it doesn’t mean there is no other “junks” which potentially harmful to us.

Hmm… how do we know if there is any other junk at all? Be sure to check back for more updates! The results will be revealed shortly after this.

Tags: Experience, Life

This entry was posted on Wednesday, February 25th, 2009 at 11:41 pm and is filed under Lifestyle, Opinions. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.