A reason NOT to catch snow on your tongue

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Mysterious ‘purple rain’ falls in Williamsburg
By Tom DiStefano, Clarion News writer

WILLIAMSBURG -- “It’s not the birds doing it,” said Joe Billotte of the mysterious substance he found on property he owns in Williamsburg .

Billotte says he found a “pinkish-purple” liquid spattering the ground and the side of a mobile home along State Route 68 south of Exit 62. Billotte lives across the highway from the mobile home.

What he found looked a lot like what he saw on the evening television news regarding an incident near Saxonburg.

KDKA-TV on Dec. 19 reported five homeowners found discolored snow in southeastern Butler County ; one man said it was a purplish color and claims he found toilet paper in the stains.

The man called it “purple rain,” but it’s more often called “blue ice.”

Blue ice is toilet waste from passenger planes. The color is from chemicals added to the water to improve its odor, help break down solids and keep it from freezing. The waste is held in tanks until emptied by airport ground crews.

The Federal Aviation Administration explains on its website that holding tank valves sometimes leak on commercial aircraft, causing small amounts of blue liquid to freeze on the outside of the plane at high altitudes.

Sometimes the blue ice breaks free from the aircraft while in flight. The ice often thaws as it falls into warmer regions of the atmosphere, and is liquid by the time it reaches the ground.

The FAA says the thawed blue ice dissipates into “miniscule droplets that are nearly invisible.”

But the droplets found in Williamsburg , Saxonburg and other locations are neither miniscule nor invisible.

Billotte said he found spots ranging from pea-sized to a little larger than a silver dollar. The stuff that hit the side of his trailer left streaks a foot or more long and a couple inches wide, he said.

The spots were mostly found concentrated in splotches about 10 to 15 feet in diameter.

Some of the spots he found were sunk into the snow, inside melted areas Billotte thinks were created by the darker color absorbing more sunlight than the white snow.

And the blue ice doesn’t always thaw. There is at least one report of a chunk of blue ice hitting and breaking through the roof of a home, landing on the bed of a young girl who found quite a mess in her room when she returned from school.

Billotte says he has heard recent reports about a blue ice incident near Brookville, and has heard privately that other land owners in Clarion County are finding the substance.

Clarion County Emergency Management Coordinator Mike Rearick said his office received no reports of blue ice.

Department of Environmental Protection spokeswoman Freda Tarbell said she has heard of no recent reports, but perhaps remembers one similar incident in her seven years at the DEP Meadville Regional office.

Tarbell says the DEP has no regulations regarding aircraft sanitation systems, and that such matters might be handled by the FAA.

The FAA and the airlines say many reports of “blue ice” or toilet wastes from aircraft are actually birds. Some birds eat fruit or berries which can give a blue or purple color to their droppings.

But in December in Western Pennsylvania , there are no berries, and the songbirds that eat them have long departed for warmer climes.

Some people think aircraft purposely release the contents of the toilet tanks while in flight, but the FAA says this is a myth. The dump valve handle is on the outside of airliners and the tanks can only be drained by maintenance crews on the ground. The pilot has no way of operating the valve while in flight.

The color of the toilet water can vary from greenish-blue to purplish-blue, apparently depending on the particular type or brand of chemical used.

Aviation and health officials say the blue ice presents a minimal health risk at most.

But Billotte said he will not let his grandchildren play in the area, and others say, without knowing what chemicals are used, they are concerned about exposing pets and children to what might be toxic chemicals.

Some methanol-based antifreeze products, such as automotive antifreeze, taste sweet to animals, but are toxic and can kill them when ingested.

And of course there is concern about possible disease-causing biological contamination from human wastes.

There is an old joke about not eating yellow snow; it might also apply to blue or purple snow.