Bioaccessibility of lead in sand intended for playground sandboxes in Slovenia: a preliminary study / Biološka dostopnost svinca v mivki, ki je namenjen otroškim peskovnikom v Sloveniji

Abstract

Slovene press has recently expressed concern for the health of children who ingest playground sand contaminated with lead. However, current assessments may be overestimating the health risk, as they assume that human body absorbs the whole amount of a contaminant. The aim of our study was to see how much lead in sand intended for playground sandboxes in Slovenia really is absorbed and what health risk it may present. To do that, we ran bioaccessibility tests to simulate metabolism and see how digestion affects lead levels. Our results show low bioaccessibility of lead from sand (0.01- 36.84 %). Taking into account lead bioaccessibility, we ran several scenarios of sand ingestion in children and established that in general the risk is negligible, except for pica behaviour with extremely high (20 g) ingestion of sand with highly mobilised lead (2.69 μg g-1). Further research should assess real-life exposure to lead from playground sand in children and perhaps update these preliminary bioaccessibility data. V zadnjem obdobju so se v Sloveniji pojavili številni pomisleki o varnosti mivke, ki je namenjena za otroške peskovnike. Ocena tveganja otrok, ki so izpostavljeni svincu temelji na predpostavki, da je celotna količina toksične kovine biološko dostopna. Zato je bil namen raziskave analizirati biološko dostopnost svinca v mivki, ki je namenjen za peskovnike otroških igrišč. Z simulacijo prebavnega trakta smo analizirali vpliv prebavnih sokov za izplavljanje svinca iz mivke. Rezultati kažejo na majhno biodostopnost svinca v mivki (0,01-36,84 %) slovenskih proizvajalcev. Na podlagi biološke dostopnosti smo simulirali različne scenarije vnosa in ugotovili, da je tveganje zanemarljivo, razen v primeru pica sindroma (zaužitje 20 g mivke) ter ob predpostavki največje dokazane biološke dostopnosti (2,69 μg g-1). Raziskave v prihodnosti bodo vključevale realno izpostavljenost otrok svincu iz peskovnikov in bodo morda nadgradile preliminarno raziskavo.