Heavy Metals in Soil and Sand from Playgrounds of Çanakkale City (Turkey), and Related Health Risks for Children

Mehmet Parlak, Tülay Tunçay and Fotini Botsou
Additional contact information
Mehmet Parlak: Lapseki Vocational School, Çanakkale Onsekiz Mart University, Çanakkale 17800, Turkey
Tülay Tunçay: Soil Fertilizer and Water Resources Central Research Institute, Ankara 35660, Turkey
Fotini Botsou: Laboratory of Environmental Chemistry, Department of Chemistry, National and Kapodistrian, University of Athens, 15784 Athens, Greece

Sustainability, 2022, vol. 14, issue 3, 1-16

Abstract: Children spend most of their time in playgrounds and, in parallel, constitute the social group most sensitive to contaminants. Here, we present the results of a comparative study of heavy-metal contents between soils and sand from sandboxes obtained from playgrounds of Çanakkale city. Average contents of soils followed the order of iron (Fe) (12,901 mg kg −1 ) > manganese (Mn) (475 mg kg −1 ) > zinc (Zn) (58 mg kg −1 ) > copper (Cu) (28 mg kg −1 ) > nickel (Ni), chromium (Cr) (21 mg kg −1 ) > lead (Pb) (18 mg kg −1 ). Sand had lower contents, however, due to the reduction of particles size through prolonged use, and accumulation of Fe/Mn (oxyhydr)oxides on sand grains tended to diminish the differences between soils and sand. Through chemometric analysis, Cr and Ni were found to have a lithogenic origin, while the rest of metals were related to anthropogenic activities. Spatially, heavy-metal contents followed the pattern of the city’s sprawl. Risk estimates on children’s health showed that ingestion was the most important exposure route, followed by dermal contact and inhalation. Exposure of children to sand was of similar importance to that of soils. These findings are significant, as the contamination of sand has not yet received much attention compared to the soil of playgrounds.

Keywords: trace elements; urban soil; playgrounds; sandboxes; risk assessment; exposure pathways; health hazard (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q Q0 Q2 Q3 Q5 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
References: View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/14/3/1145/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/14/3/1145/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jsusta:v:14:y:2022:i:3:p:1145-:d:728963

Access Statistics for this article

Sustainability is currently edited by Ms. Alexandra Wu

More articles in Sustainability from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().