Jaunted

St. Patrick's Day

The Chemical Breakdown of the Chicago River Greenness

March 17, 2008 at 9:48 AM | 0 Comments

This past Saturday the Chicago River once again went green for St. Patrick's Day. Yes, Chicago folks have been doing this since 1962.

If you remember, last year we caught Good Luck Bear pouring oozing green sludge into the Chicago River in broad daylight. Last year we questioned the motives of the Care Bears and asked: environmental terrorists or festive tourism promoters?

This year new evidence has come to our attention from both CNN and blog scientists. CNN says that Chicago uses a "secret orange dye," which sounds downright sinister and makes us half expect to see a giant red M&M dumping the dye into the river. However, those at scienceblogs.com suggest the dye is nothing more than fluorescein. Either way, some in Chicago claim the river looks green without the "dye" or the fluorescein.

Photo of this weekend's dye job above, while after the jump there is a Google map of the dye free river.