How much dirt does a person eat in a week?

Answer 1

There's no way of knowing how much dirt - in the sense of soil and similar substances which we might consider unclean - any one person, or people on average, eat in a week.

The amount of unintentionally-ingested substances, in this case, dirt, we eat depends on a lot of variables, but especially on the type of environment in which we live, and our age, as well as many other circumstances.

So a toddler living a mainly outdoor kind of life will eat far more extras than the same toddler living in an indoor environment with houseproud, over-hygenic parents.

An outdoor worker will ingest more foreign matter than an office worker; an office worker who spends a lot of spare time gardening will ingest more foreign matter than the same office worker who spends their spare time on indoor pursuits.

You could run a test yourself, by estimating every time you eat just how much extra stuff might end up in your food, as well as keeping track of how much time you spend in environments where airborne and hand-borne foreign matter might find its way into your mouth.

If you think you're about average, that will give you a rough idea.