SOIL INGESTION - A CONCERN FOR ACUTE TOXICITY IN CHILDREN

Several soil ingestion studies have indicated that some children inges t substantial amounts of soil on given days. Although the EPA has assu med that 95% of children ingest 200 mg soil/day or less for exposure a ssessment purposes, some children have been observed to ingest up to 2 5-60 g soil during a single day. In light of the potential for childre n to ingest such large amounts of soil, an assessment was made of the possibility for soil pica episodes to result in acute intoxication fro m contaminant concentrations the EPA regards as representing conservat ive screening values (i.e., EPA soil screening levels and EPA Region I II risk-based concentrations or residential soils). For a set of 13 ch emicals included in the analysis, contaminant doses resulting from a o ne-time soil pica episode (5-50 g of soil ingested) were compared with acute dosages shown to produce toxicity in humans in clinical studies or case reports. For four of these chemicals, a soil pica episode was found to result in a contaminant dose approximating or exceeding the acute human lethal dose. For five of the remaining chemicals, the cont aminant dose from a soil pica episode was well within the reported dos e range in humans for human for toxicity other than lethality. Because both the exposure episodes and the toxicological response information are derived from observations in humans, these findings are regarded as particularly relevant for human health risk assessment. They sugges t that, for some chemicals, ostensibly conservative soil criteria base d on chronic exposure using current EPA methodology may nor be protect ive of children during acute soil pica episodes.