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 | Credits | News Release

Introduction

Children love to play—especially outdoors. The outdoor environment provides unique opportunities for play and learning. Play is an essential component of healthy development in children, and playgrounds provide an opportunity for children to develop motor, cognitive, perceptual and social skills. In New York City, where many children do not have backyards, playgrounds are especially important and often the public parks and playgrounds are among the only places children have to play outdoors.

However, children can only benefit from playing outdoors if it is safe. Outdoor play equipment, in particular, poses hazards to children when it is not carefully designed and maintained. The leading cause of playground equipment-related fatalities is strangulation, and the majority of these deaths occur on home playgrounds. Nonfatal playground equipment-related injuries, on the other hand, are most often due to falls. The majority of these nonfatal injuries take place on public playgrounds, including school, childcare and park playgrounds.

Each year, children die and are seriously injured on playgrounds in the United States. According to recent U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) data, it is estimated that approximately 200,000 persons are treated annually in hospital emergency rooms for playground equipment-related injuries in the United States. Tragically, since 1990, more than 150 children have died from playground equipment-related injuries.

Many of these deaths and injuries could be prevented if playgrounds were designed with greater attention to safety. Playground equipment guidelines and standards have been developed and are regularly updated by the CPSC and the American Society for Testing and Materials (ASTM). At least seven states (including New York) have enacted some form of playground safety legislation. The CPSC has also issued voluntary guidelines for drawstrings on children's clothing to prevent children from strangling or getting entangled in the neck and waist drawstrings of outerwear garments, such as jackets and sweatshirts. Children are at risk from strangulation when drawstrings on clothing become entangled in playground equipment. However, all these national guidelines are voluntary and the state regulations (including in New York) are not comprehensive in that they do not come close to addressing all the potential hazards posed by playgrounds.

The survey included in this report, "Playing It Safe - How Safe are New York's Playgrounds?" is based on the Consumer Federation of America's (CFA's) "Report and Model Law on Public Play Equipment and Areas." The goal of this report is to educate those who are responsible for and care about playgrounds — including parents, school administrators, child care providers, parks personnel and designers, so that they can make informed, safe choices about play equipment and the layout of play areas. CFA's reports detail the hazards on playgrounds in the form of a model law with provisions for safety and design of public play equipment and areas. While no play area or piece of equipment can be made completely safe, careful design and maintenance can minimize injuries and save children's lives.

The statewide survey of playgrounds conducted for this report is intended to provide a snapshot of the current safety conditions of New York's playgrounds and to raise awareness of the safety issues related to playgrounds at the beginning of the spring/summer 2006 outdoor play season.

Deaths and Injuries on Public Playgrounds

Children can be seriously injured while playing on playgrounds. Injuries can be sustained in many different ways.

Falls account for roughly 80% of all playground-related injuries and 20% of playground-related deaths. Protective surfacing, lower equipment heights and adequate fall zones under and around playground equipment can reduce the severity of and even prevent playground fall-related injuries. The risk of injury is four times greater if a child falls from playground equipment that is more than 1.5 meters (approximately 5 feet) high than from equipment that is less than 1.5 meters high. The risk of injury in a fall onto a non-impact-absorbing surface such as asphalt or concrete is more than twice that of falling onto an impact-absorbing surface. Protective surfacing (especially soft fill surfacing) requires care and maintenance as a soft fill depth that is sufficient in April may not be sufficient in August if it is not replenished and maintained.

Other causes of injury involve impact with moving equipment, running into stationary equipment, sharp edges, protrusions, pinch points, hot surfaces and debris in the play area. Other causes of death involve strangulation (caused by entanglement and head entrapment), impact with moving equipment and equipment failures or tipovers.

top | next >>

www.nypirg.org