Prevalence of Toxocara spp. eggs in sandpits of eight public parks in Toulouse (SW France)

Toxocariasis is considered to be a potentially severe zoonosis. Handling so il or sand contaminated by animal fecal deposits is one of the major infect ion route for human. Therefore, contaminated playgrounds or sandpits repres ent a risk for children. To investigate this risk in Toulouse, a survey was conducted in eight public parks in 1998 and 1999 with four sampling period s for each playground. The results have shown that six out of eight sandpits were contaminated at least once. Immature or fully embryonnated Toxocara spp. eggs were detected from 38 % o f the total samples.