Think Twice Before Sending Children to Play in the Sandbox.
Children love sandpits, but they also love animals, bacteria and parasites. Not all sandboxes are dangerous, but you can at least check out the sandbox before letting your child dive into its mysterious contents.
As a kid, I definitely spent quite a bit of time fighting ants in the backyard sandbox, but if I knew what it might be, I would give it to the ants. Slate’s Melinda Wenner Moyer has done a number of studies showing how muddy dirt can be:
… the public health testing organization NSF International took samples of 26 different objects in public places – toys in doctors’ offices, books from children’s libraries, sandboxes in playgrounds – for a microbial study in 2008, they found that sandboxes were undoubtedly the most infested of all, harboring nearly 2,000 times more bacteria, yeast, and mold per square inch than public restroom doorknobs.
This is pretty crude, but germs are not the end of the world for children to strengthen their immune systems. Unfortunately, there are also:
… other microbial gifts that sandboxes sometimes leave behind for children: parasitic worms. Like giant trays, open sandpits invite animals – raccoons, dogs, cats – to use them as bathrooms, effectively turning them into giant petri dishes for parasites.
These parasites may include the parasitic worm Ascaris , the feline Toxoplasma gondii , the dangerous Toxocara, and the raccoons Baylisascaris procyonis (one third of which are fatal). However, before ditching sandboxes altogether, it is important to know that cases of dangerous parasitic infections are usually quite rare. Plus, there are a few things you can do to keep your kids safe on the playground. Cover sandboxes at home when not in use to keep animals out, keep children out of sandboxes that smell bad, and do your best to keep your children’s hands clean and away from their mouths during and after play (hand sanitizer does not kill the eggs of parasitic worms, so wash them with soap and water). The entire article is worth reading, so find out more about sandbox security at the link below.
Sandboxes are disgusting | Slate