The American University Child Development Center serves children from ages 2½ to 6 years old. ATSDR estimates that children in this age group ingest around 200 mg of soil every day. Adults are estimated to ingest half this amount. Soils are ingested through several means, such as by eating with dirty hands, or placing dirty hands in the mouth. Soils may also be ingested as inhaled dusts, which are cleansed from the lungs and disposed of in the esophagus. Also, some very young children may purposely eat large amounts of soils.

There are several ways that children may come into contact with the soils in the play area. The area contains a garden for the children, where children may receive the most direct contact with the soil while gardening. Children may also dig in the soil throughout the area, although the area is covered with grass. The grass cover also limits the amount of dust that may become airborne and subsequently inhaled.

In this setting, a child whose weight is estimated at 10 kg (22 pounds) or larger would not ingest a large enough amount of arsenic to cause adverse health effects. However, should the same-size child purposely eat large amounts of soil (perhaps a handful), he or she could ingest sufficient amounts of arsenic to cause nausea, diarrhea, and abdominal cramps. Should the child eat large amounts of soil every day over a period of a few weeks, he or she could develop other symptoms, such as spots on their palms or the soles of their feet, which have either less or more pigmentation than the surrounding skin. These spots could be the precursor to the dark-colored warts or corns that are characteristic of large exposures to arsenic. These areas of darkened, thickened skin may themselves become precursors to skin cancer. However, the risk of developing skin cancer for a child who has often eaten a handful of this soil is comparable to the risk derived from eating the same amount of native soils.

Other cancers have also been associated with ingesting arsenic in drinking water, including cancers of the bladder, kidney, liver, and lung. However, arsenic in drinking water is much more readily absorbed from the gastro-intestinal tract than is arsenic from soils. For this reason, the risk of developing these cancers is not elevated from being exposed to these soils.

Adults and older children, who tend to ingest less soil than young children, and who are much larger in size, would be exposed to much less amounts of arsenic, and should not experience any adverse health effects, including cancer, from exposure to these soils.

CONCLUSIONS