Background | Survey Findings | Focus: New York’s Most Potentially Hazardous Playgrounds | Survey Results
Litter in the Playgrounds | Focus: Are New York’s Playgrounds Getting Safer? | Recommendations and Conclusions
Upstate Playground Table | New York City and Long Island Playground Table

Recommendations and Conclusion
Deaths and injuries related to public playground equipment ‚ deaths and injuries that could be prevented ‚ continue to occur. While no play area or piece of equipment can be made completely safe, careful design minimizes injuries and saves children's lives. Adults are responsible for creating play environments that are challenging for children but also reasonably safe. Utilizing age-appropriate equipment, following a regular maintenance schedule, limiting equipment height and maintaining adequate surfacing, combined with adult supervision, can greatly reduce the incidence and severity of playground injuries.

It behooves local authorities to make public playgrounds safer. The estimated national cost of playground equipment-related injuries for individuals younger than 20 was $11.1 billion in 2001. Those costs include medical, legal and liability, pain and suffering and work loss expenses. The last comprehensive analysis conducted between 1974 and 1987 of 215 lawsuits against recreational programs in New York and New Jersey found that playgrounds led all categories of such suits, and of the 54 (one-quarter of the total) against playgrounds, the primary problem areas included "provision and maintenance of proper surfacing under apparatus and in play areas."

Despite the high number of hazardous playgrounds found in this survey, the situation is not hopeless. Playgrounds can be built safely. When constructed correctly, playgrounds provide lots of fun and developmental challenges for children. NYPIRG and CFA offer the following recommendations:

(1) States and local governments should adopt CFA's "Model Law on Public Play Equipment and Areas."

(2) Parents, school administrators, child care providers and park personnel should evaluate local playgrounds using the CFA's Parent Checklist (included on the CFA web site www.consumerfed.org) and work to make them safer by contacting the owner or operator of the playground and demanding corrective action.

(3) Schools and municipalities should regularly seal CCA-treated play equipment to prevent children's exposures to toxic residue, as required under state law. Since even sealing treated wood may not be 100% effective, we recommend replacing CCA-treated play equipment with safer materials.

(4) The New York State Legislature should pass proposed legislation A2517D(DiNapoli)/S1290D(LaValle) to update New York's "bottle bill." This proposal would expand the deposit program to include noncarbonated beverages such as bottled water, juice and iced tea, and would reduce the amount of litter and broken glass bottles in public playgrounds.

(5) The New York State Legislature should pass proposed legislation, Bill # A2319 (Englebright), that would reduce exposure of children to pesticides in public playgrounds and school yards by establishing requirements for integrated pest management in municipal facilities.

NYPIRG is also supportive of efforts taken by the Center for Disease Control and Prevention and the National Center for Injury Prevention and Control (CDC) to improve playground safety. These efforts include funding the National Program for Playground Safety (NPPS) which has developed a National Action Plan for the Prevention of Playground Injuries; assessing the effectiveness of various cushioning surfaces for outdoor and indoor playgrounds; training school administrators, teachers, nurses, child care specialists, and recreation professionals about playground safety; and evaluating playground safety programs and helping communities adopt effective ones. NYPIRG urges CDC to step up their efforts and to continue to play an important role in improving the safety of public playgrounds by ensuring the safety of playground equipment.

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