Fake Movie Snow May Cause Illness

Mom always said play in the snow too long and you’ll come down with a cough and a runny nose, but now even the fake Hollywood stuff can make you sick, a Panorama City doctor has found.

Michael Sue, an allergist, reports in today’s New England Journal of Medicine that polyethylene snow, which is basically shredded plastic bags, caused months of coughing and a runny nose for a 38-year-old special effects man who accidentally inhaled some during a movie shoot last summer.

Plastic flakes became trapped in the man’s lungs and irritated his breathing until doctors flushed his lungs out with saltwater and removed the flakes.

There are several varieties of artificial snow in the movie industry, including soapsuds and potato flakes as well as polyethylene, which is widely used for interior shots.

The special effects man, whom doctors did not identify, was initially diagnosed as having an allergy. But none of the traditional allergy remedies--inhalers, antihistamines, cough suppressants--stopped the coughing and wheezing. He was then referred to Sue, a pollen and hay fever specialist at the Southern California Permanente Group in Panorama City.

When Sue saw him in August he learned the man had been working with plastic snow, and wondered if some of the material had become trapped in his lungs.

“I had thought that he had inhaled some of the snow over time, so I recommended a bronchoscopy,” Sue said Wednesday.

In September the man underwent a bronchoscopy, in which pulmonary doctors slipped a fiberoptic scope into his lungs and took a sample of fluid. The pulmonary doctors found just what Sue had suspected: artificial snow in the lungs. The doctors then flushed the man’s lungs with saltwater and removed the plastic flakes that were bothering him.

The man recovered fully, Sue said.

This was the first reported case of artificial snow making someone sick, Sue said. But the doctor believes there may be more cases and suggests as a preventive measure that people who work with fake plastic snow wear dust masks.

But whether film crews will follow the advice is another matter.

“Unfortunately, in this business there’s an attitude that it’s wimpy to take safety precautions,” said Marc Pollack, president of Flix FX in North Hollywood. “If someone was wearing a mask, the production people would get freaked out and ask, ‘What are you wearing a mask for? Is there something wrong?’ As a result, there’s this macho attitude out there.”

Still, after hearing about Sue’s findings, Pollack said the next time his crew stages a fake blizzard, they’ll definitely wear masks.