Pollutants in urban snow

Every winter, hundreds of thousands of tons of snow are cleared in cold climate cities to maintain accessibility and road safety. The cleared snow is sometimes dumped into surface water bodies or placed in central snow dumps, and with the snow also comes pollution. Urban snow and its meltwater are thus a transport route for pollutants in our cities further into the environment and can contribute to, for example, deteriorating surface water quality.

The major sources of pollutants in urban snow are traffic, atmospheric deposition, road salt, sand and gravel from de-icing and littering. Over the years, the focus of investigated pollutants has been on metals, chloride, PAHs, oil, particulate matter and nutrients. DRIZZLE is investigating the presence of an expanded number of substances and groups of substances in urban snow, such as tungsten, microplastics, phthalates, alkylphenols and bisphenols. Furthermore, there is a need to better understand the impact of different snow management options on the dispersion of the pollutants present in the snow and to develop different proposals for snow management and treatment.