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Healthy
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PLAYGROUNDS:
FUN & SAFE
Children's playgrounds can be exciting areas where children explore their environment while developing motor and social skills. Play areas offer benefits to parents and teachers, too, by providing a place where children can release their energy in an adventurous and safe way.
But unfortunately, not all playgrounds are safe. Each year, nearly 200,000 children require emergency medical treatment for injuries occurring on playgrounds. Falls cause the most serious playground injuries and these can be fatal, particularly if the injury is to the head. Other injuries occur from collisions with moving playground equipment like swings, or from equipment hazards such as areas of entrapment, sharp edges, protruding hardware, and pinch points.
The good news is that most injuries are preventable! How can these injuries be prevented? Adding a resilient playground surface may reduce the severity of injuries from the falls. Perhaps the slide is too tall and a smaller slide would be more age-appropriate. And, of course, proper supervision could remove the situation leading up to the falls.
The three keys to safer outdoor play for children are environment, supervision and education. As you examine your playground for hazards, the first step is to change the environment, if necessary, and remove any potential hazards.
SURFACING
Protective surfacing is one of the most critical safety measures on playgrounds today. With the most serious playground injuries coming from falls, just providing a layer of deep sand underneath (8 inches or more) and around the climbing equipment offers a surface that gives. A resilient surface underneath and around slides, swings, and climbers provides a safer "fall zone" to help absorb the impact from falls and may significantly reduce injuries.
Playground surfaces that are hard and uneven invite injuries and the use of cushioning products may help reduce those injuries. Even grass is not an acceptable surface for a child more than 36 inches tall. A fall from an eight-foot slide (the height of many slides) onto concrete or asphalt is the same as hitting a brick wall at 30 miles per hour in a car. No wonder falls from equipment cause the most severe injuries!
What types of resilient surfaces makes up a safe fall zone? Organic mulch, wood chips from hardwood trees, coarse sand, small pea gravel, shredded rubber tires, and commercially prepared surfaces all offer cushioning and like any product, come with advantages and disadvantages. Organic mulch and wood chips stay in place and out of shoes but decompose and require frequent resurfacing. Coarse sand or masonry sand is low cost and does not pack when moist but gets into shoes and requires frequent leveling. Pea gravel (must be less than 3/8 inches in diameter) will not pack or decompose and drains well but requires frequent leveling and is recommended for children older than five. Shredded rubber tires will not decompose but is more expensive and may leave black marks on interior floors. Commercially prepared surfaces provide smooth, even surfaces but are expensive and may require some cleaning.
DESIGN & MAINTENANCE
Poor maintenance of playground equipment often contributes to many avoidable injuries. While much of today's playground equipment is durable, poor maintenance or wear and tear can lead to sharp edges, broken steps and railings, exposed bolts and other protrusions, and exposed or unstable foundations. Just because a playground has a protective surface does not mean it is forever safe. Routine maintenance is needed to make sure the surface is sufficient to decrease injuries.
A young girl in Louisiana is paralyzed after falling onto a hard playground surface and hitting an exposed concrete footing. Playground surfacing and footings need frequent examination by center staff. All footings should be routinely checked to make sure they are well below ground and covered with an effective resilient surface. In the Louisiana case, the approximately four inches of protective surface was much less than the two inches of gravel and five inches of wood chips applied only 11 months before.
Equipment design, even on new and well maintained equipment, can lead to injury as well. A climber with cris-cross metal bars looks inviting but a falling child may land on an underneath bar instead of falling clear of the apparatus to a protective surface. Other structures may have entrapments such as places where a child's body can slip through but the head may get stuck leading to strangulation.
CHECKING THE PLAYGROUND
How do you check your playground for safety? Use a checklist and frequently walk through the play area inspecting for debris, rough edges or rough wood (splinters), pinch points, open S-hooks (pinch them together to keep out small fingers and to keep swings from flying free of the equipment), protruding objects, and exposed footings. Make sure all equipment is working properly and that slide steps and climber bars are secure and swings and merry-go-rounds move freely. Check to see that the playground surface is level or needs additional cushioning materials placed in some areas. If you are unsure of the depth of the playground surface, carry a ruler when making a play area check so you can document the depth on your checklist.
A Michigan child died when the drawstring on her coat hood became entangled in the apparatus of a slide. Checking to see that pinch points cannot grab either skin or clothing can help reduce injuries and even deaths. Playgrounds built 10–20 years ago may need to be checked for safety measures that go beyond routine maintenance. Slides that are too tall (more than 5 feet) or steep for young children should be removed. Swing seats should be soft to avoid becoming battering rams to heads when children fall. Guard rails should appear on platform, deck, or walkway-including the top of slides-that are more than 30 inches high. Spaces between posts, ladder rungs, deck levels or swinging exercise rings may trap small heads and should be measured for entrapment areas.
In areas of the country where snow fall is heavy, playgrounds present some interesting challenges. Snow cover quickly becomes a hard packed surface and at times can be icy. Snowfall may lessen the distance between the bottom of the swing and the ground so that tiny legs swinging back may become caught on the ground instead of swinging clear. Wooden pathways and steps to slides may be slippery. Since it may be impossible to remove all the snow, adult supervision on winter playgrounds may need to be increased to help children avoid snow-related accidents.
SUPERVISION & EDUCATION
Supervision in the play area is a key to safety. Children, full of energy and curiosity, may find creative ways to use playground equipment such as going down the slide backwards, walking up the slide with the eyes closed, or climbing up support poles. Improper use of equipment, and the lack of adult supervision which this reflects, can result in injury. Adult supervision should involve active participation in children's play as well as constant awareness of the overall environment. The staff-to-child ratio is as important on the playground as in the classroom. Adults often mistakenly believe that "someone else" is monitoring playground safety and may use the outdoor time to chat with friends or co-workers or get caught up on paperwork-and not supervise play activity.
The final key to outdoor safety is education of the child, staff, and parents. Regular staff meetings should include reminders of playground safety rules and maintenance checks to constantly educate staff on the need to keep a safe environment and proper supervision. Newsletters sent home to parents can remind them of what to look for when their children visit area playgrounds as well as key issues for safety such as watching for falls and supervising children when they play.
Children, too, can be educated about injury prevention. Often, adults present children with a set of rules to follow, without helping the child understand why the rules are important. Select three or four key playground rules and then provide learning opportunities for the child to understand why these rules are important. If the objective is to prevent children from walking or running in front of a moving swing, then try teaching this rule by designating a boundary in front and back of the swing. Using a protective surface such as deep sand actual provides a visible boundary since young children cannot judge distance. Talk about what might happen if a child is hit by a moving swing and let the children describe how it would feel. The children learn about injury prevention through active participation and hopefully, being participants in playground safety will help these children to play safer.
Playground time is an important part of a young child's day and it is a time filled with fun. With proper safety and with consideration of the environment, supervision and education, playground incidents can be kept to a minimum so that time in the play area is not only fun, but safe as well.
Dr. Charlotte Hendricks is Health Educations and Special Projects coordinator with the Jefferson County Committee for Economic Opportunity (JCCEO), Birmingham, Alabama.What to look for when buying equipment
- The equipment needs to meet the CPSC guidelines.
- Installation needs to meet CPSC guidelines and be performed by trained (and conscientious) installers.
- Resilient surfacing needs to be included.
Resources
- The American Society for Testing & Materials (ASTM) has general information on playground safety and prevention. 100 Barr Harbor Drive, W. Conshohocken, PA 19428-2959; 610-832-9555 or www.astm.org.
- The U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) has information on standards for playgrounds. Washington, D.C., 20207; 800-638-2772; www.cpsc.gov.
- The National Program for Playground Safety has information on playground inspection certification classes, playground related publications, and more. School of HPELS, University of Northern Iowa, Cedar Falls, Iowa 50614-0618; 800-554-PLAY; www.uni.edu/playground.
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