the 07/23/2008

Are Playground Safety Mats Too Hot to Handle?

Are Playground Safety Mats Too Hot to Handle?

 

Updated, 3:43 p.m. | Rubber safety mats have become a fixture of children’splaygrounds in New York City, buffering heads, hands and other bodyparts when children slip and fall. But two news accounts today— in The Daily News and in Metro New York — question whether the mats themselves pose a hazard: Theycan get so hot under the summer sun that they can burn bare feet.

The Daily News found that some of the mats could get as hot as 160degrees. Two of the city’s burn centers evidently reportedtreating 10 cases of playground burns last year, and at least threelawsuits have been filed by parents over playground burns.

“Playgrounds should be designed with canopies,”Geoffrey Croft, the founder of the NYC Park Advocates , a parks watchdog group, said in a phone interview. “Thecity should be pressuring the manufacturers to come up with asolution.”

This afternoon, Betsy Gotbaum, the city’s public advocate anda former city parks commissioner, said in a statement:

In a phone interview, Adrian Benepe , the commissioner of the city’s Department of Parks and Recreation , said the criticism was understandable but unwarranted.

He noted that all parks have signs warning children and other usersto wear shoes, and said that it was imperative that parents andcaretakers keep a careful eye on youngsters, who sometimes want torun barefoot. “If you wear shoes, even on the hottest days,you won’t burn your feet,” he said. “Therearen’t many cases of kids with burned feet that have beenbrought to our attention.”

The city’s roughly 1,000 playgrounds all have equipment thatconforms to safety standards set by the Consumer Product Safety Commission and ASTM International , formerly the American Society for Testing and Materials, Mr.Benepe added.

The federal safety commission’s Public Playground Safety Handbook [pdf] specifies several types of materials approved for use assafety surfaces in playgrounds, including rubber mats and tiles,engineered wood fiber, pea gravel, sand, shredded or recycledrubber mulch and wood mulch or chips, but Mr. Benepe said thatrubber mats were the best solution for New York City. A loose-fillsurface, like one made of wood mulch or gravel, would be difficultto clean and keep safe in a heavily used urban space and couldquickly become a dumping ground for dog waste and other hazardslike broken glass or needles.

“Those of us who are older grew up without any rubber safetysurfaces,” Mr. Benepe said. “Prior to that, in theclassic New York City playground, the ground surface was asphalt orconcrete, and people suffered terrible injuries, particularly headinjuries, from falls off play equipment, monkey bars, swings. Atthe very least, you skinned your knee or elbow badly.”

Replacing all of the rubber safety mats used in the city’splaygrounds could cost as much as $100 million, he estimated, andusing mats with lighter colors would reduce surface temperaturesonly slightly.

“We will examine all new technologies to reduce thetemperature, if possible,” he said. “We are constantlyrefining playground design and trying make them safe. In fact, wedo it so much that we get complaints that our playgrounds aredull.”

(Indeed, with all the plastic modular equipment and safeguards,some parents do complain that playgrounds have become less challenging and fun for children, as The Times noted in a 2005 article.)

Dr. Kate Cronan, a pediatric emergency physician at the Alfred I.duPont Hospital for Children in Wilmington, Del., and a senioreditor at KidsHealth.org , said in a phone interview that she had not encountered manyexamples of foot burns from safety surfaces, and she agreed thatshoes are essential for children.

“It’s not just the mats,” said Dr. Cronan, whohas no involvement with New York City playground design. “Irecommend to parents that their kids need to keep those shoes on.They’ll be climbing up rungs, monkey bars, jungle gyms. Totake shoes off creates a slippery situation. And I always advisethat children must wear shoes, not flip-flops: they’re cuteand fun, but can slip off your feet easily. That’s a recipefor a fall.”

Dr. Cronan said she had seen cases of children with red orirritated feet from walking across hot asphalt on streets, inparking lots and in driveways, but added: “You have to havemore contact than just like grabbing a handle to see a burn injuryfrom a piece of equipment. On the hottest days of the year, whenthose pieces of equipment are too hot, the kids tend to not evenwant to be on the playground for a long period. Momentary grabbingof something that’s hot shouldn’t be enough time forexposure. It’s not like touching a flame, or something thatwould burn more quickly.”

Some research has shown that lighter-colored mats get hot lessquickly than black mats, so a pilot project to test out the lightercolors would be a good idea, Dr. Cronan said, adding that New YorkCity should also try to provide as much shade as possible above themats.