Toxic playgrounds

New Orleans should never have children playing in it.
Especially at school.
However, according to a study published today, many people may do so.
Duran University and his colleagues are concerned about the risks that older people pose to children
Pressure-treated wood, which is injected with substances that limit decay and insect deterioration.
This town is a veritable termite capital, so it is a reasonable place to look for treated wood.
Mielke\'s team took a portable instrument to the playground for an arsenic survey.
They found it on 36% of the websites.
The survey was a pilot study that examined only 38 playgrounds but crossed the entire New Orleans metropolitan area.
Mielke believes, \"Ironically, if you want to find arsenic in the soil, go to a children\'s play area with wooden structures.
\"These areas are likely to be treated under pressure from the CCA combination and filter a large number of these carcinogens and neurotoxic substances into the soil.
In each contaminated play area, the researchers grabbed a little bit of soil and brought it back to the lab for one-time digestion
Molar nitric acid, a solution that simulates the pH of the stomach in children.
\"What we found was that the median concentration of arsenic was about 57 parts per million,\" Mielke said.
This is compared to median 1.
The quality of soil in New Orleans is usually 5 ppm. ” The play-
Scientists reported at the annual meeting that the median value of the yard was more than four times the allowable limit for arsenic in the Luanna soil.
The most shocking example that scientists have come up with happens to be in a stress-free primary school --
Treated wood frame
Here, processed wood has been cut and used as a buffer ground around slides, swings and other devices that children may fall.
This wood is not used legally because it should be treated as a hazardous waste.
There are good reasons.
These chips contain 813 to 1,654 ppm of soluble arsenic.
Mielke\'s team informed the school of those skies.
At high arsenic concentrations, schools replace contaminated potato chips with untreated bark.
Mielke predicts that the arsenic hazard in New Orleans will not be unique: \"I hope to see it all over the country.
For decades, CCA-
Across the country, treated wood is the preferred wood for play structures, picnic tables, decks and fences. That CCA-
The processed wood has arsenic Frost in addition to new things.
A few years ago, I wrote a cover story about the risks that this timber could bring.
The federal government was imposing a ban on arsenic cream.
Structures that may be in contact with bare skin are treated with wood.
I thought the playground-especially in schools and daycare-would replace any toxic wood.
There is very little, says milk.
\"There has been a recent campaign banning CCA --
But we still have a lot of wood that has not been processed yet.
\"The cost of cleaning it up is not huge, maybe a few pounds per playground (his estimate of cleaning up a few playgrounds in town), but still out of the discretionary budget for cash --
The park and the school are very nervous.
Mielke said what they should do when playground managers find the arsenic problem a good one, because \"if we try to remove the soil, we don\'t know where to put it.
\"The cost of moving it is also very high, which can prove to be public --
Relationship nightmare.
\"People enter the game area wearing moon suits and special equipment to try to dig the contaminated material\", which may scare parents.
In most cases, Mielke says, the cost is the highest.
An effective approach may be to simply paint the exposed CCA
Processed structure
For soil contamination, the biogeochemist recommends covering the ground with a permeable landscape fabric, and then covering the ground with a clean filling of six to 8 inch of dirt.
\"We use the silt and sand of the Mississippi River, which contains very low amounts of arsenic, lead and other metals.
\"Parents should not be told where the game area is suspected of contamination.
The playground management did not ask for an investigation of arsenic in the soil.
\"We found that when we were ready to take a sample at the Children\'s Hospital --
\"We knew very quickly that they didn\'t want to know the results,\" Milk said . \".
At least after the completion of any remedy.
At the very least, if they know they have a problem and do not close immediately before the test confirms that the area is clean, they may face a liability issue.
\"Therefore, in our study, we agreed to take samples and did not give the results until after we had completed the work on the [Clean-up site . \".
This provides them with a reasonable denial of any prior problems. “The take-
Mielke said, \"the family message is that more attention needs to be paid to the quality of the play area for children.
In this study of arsenic discovery, \"78% of soil samples were higher than national standards.
This makes it worthwhile to investigate the game area of this issue.