The city did the right thing closing Swann Park in South Baltimore, but residents and athletes who used the park should not worry about cancer, experts say.
“With chronic low-level exposures, there is potential for arsenic to cause some cancers,” said Dr. Suzanne Doyon, medical director of the Maryland Poison Center. “It would be, for any single individual, a very short time spent on that playground or field.”
The Maryland Poison Center has not seen an arsenic poisoning case in recent memory, she said.
Typically poisoning cases result from accidental ingestion or inhaling arsenic powder.
“Arsenic, in itself, is a metal. It has no taste and no color, so you won?t be able to detect it,” Doyon said. “Typically the [United States] has not been one of the areas of the world where you have large amounts of arsenic occurring naturally in the water.”
After closing the park Thursday, City Health Commissioner Dr. Josh Sharfstein said city officials would await the results of an Environmental Protection Agency analysis before deciding the park?s future.
The main source of arsenic in the United States diet is from beef and seafood, though wine grapes and tobacco treated with arsenic-based pesticides are a significant factor, according to the National Institutes of Health?s Medline Plus Web site.
Acute, short-term exposure can cause nausea and vomiting, and in severe cases, kidney failure. More severe long-term exposure can cause liver or nerve damage and birth defects.
Although athletes who played on Swann Park could absorb trace amounts of arsenic if they were injured on the field, she said, “it?s not very well absorbed through the skin.”
Even with an open wound, Doyon said, they would not likely suffer from the arsenic.
“I think that closing down the park while they investigate is the right thing to do, but I don?t think we need to worry,” Doyon said.
