Cleaning Up Toxic Playgrounds

Reported October

WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. (Ivanhoe Newswire) -- When we hear stories of lead poisoning in kids, many times we blame paint and imported toys; but chronic lead poisoning from playing in contaminated dirt is affecting U.S. children in epidemic proportions.

Playgrounds are supposed to be a safe place for kids to have fun, but there's a dirty secret lurking in the playgrounds of many U.S. cities. The soil our kids play on is tainted with lead.

"When kids live in areas with high soil lead, they're much more likely to be impaired by lead poisoning," Gabriel Filippelli, Ph.D., a geochemist at Purdue University in West Lafayette, Ind., told Ivanhoe.

According to geochemists, contaminated soil in older cities is causing chronic lead poisoning in children in epidemic proportions. Hundreds of thousands of kids are affected.

"What we found is that most cities on average have about twice or three times what would be considered naturally occurring lead values," Filippelli explained.

When children are exposed to blowing, dry, lead-filled soil, the lead is ingested and absorbed into the blood stream. Its effects are toxic.

"Kids have substantially lowered IQ's, and they have substantially increased rates of attention deficit hyperactivity disorder," Filippelli said.

Now, researchers have a simple solution to clean up contaminated dirt. Watering down dry dirt keeps dust levels down, and planting grass helps seal it so kids don't track dirt back into their homes.

"What I would suggest to parents or consumers is to be aware," Filippelli cautioned. "First of all, the lead is still a continuing public health menace, so get your kids tested and get them tested early."

This can keep playgrounds safe and give parents peace of mind. Almost all lead in soil comes from lead-based paint chips flaking from homes, factory pollution and leaded gasoline. A simple blood test can detect whether a child has high levels of lead.

The American Geophysical Union and the Materials Research Society contributed to the information contained in the TV portion of this report. This report has also been produced thanks to a generous grant from the Camille and Henry Dreyfus Foundation, Inc.

Click here to Go Inside This Science or contact:

Cindy Fox Aisen
Public Affairs
Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI)
City, ST
(317) 843-2276
caisen@iupui.edu

Peter Weiss
American Geophysical Union
Washington, DC 20009-1277
(800) 966-2481
http://www.agu.org
pweiss@agu.org

Materials Research Society
Warrendale, PA 15086-7573
(724) 779-3003
http://www.mrs.org
webmaster@mrs.org

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