Playground taphonomy

I’m sitting in a playground, on a Sunday afternoon, watching decay happen in real time, like a small-scale experiment in taphonomy. Google tells me playground paint has a lifespan of around ten years. I can’t help thinking about where it goes. Tiny particles released into the surrounding soil, tracked away on shoes, washed into drains by rain. What are they carrying with them? Pigments, binders, trace metals? Potential pollutants moving through the environment, I wonder how far they become dispersed beyond the original structure? 

I am thinking about how this would read archaeologically. A surface repeatedly repainted versus one left to crumble. Some structures maintained long past their original design life alongside elements allowed to fail. How far do the tiny particles we see in sediment micromorphology samples represent a local activity and how much comes from dispersal?