Protecting Children's Playground Safety

Play environments including playgrounds are a very fundamental component of healthy development in children providing them opportunities to develop motor, cognitive, perceptual and social skills. Unfortunately, parks and playgrounds are often sites of preventable childhood injuries. Municipalities, educators and land owners that build and maintain playground areas are responsible for creating and maintaining safe play environments. This is true whether the playgrounds are for public or private use. Playgrounds should be fun and challenging for children but also reasonably safe. It is up to the owners of playground equipment to ensure that it is reasonably safe for use by children.

Falls generally account for the great majority of playground injuries; however, entanglement of clothing or entrapment in playground equipment can also result in serious injury. There are several ways children can be injured by no fault of their own. Examples besides falls, entanglement or entrapment include contact with such hazards as protrusions, pinch points, sharp edges, hot surfaces and playground debris.

Utilizing age-appropriate equipment, following a regular maintenance schedule, limiting equipment height and maintaining adequate surfacing, combined with appropriate adult supervision, can greatly reduce the incidence and severity of playground injuries. While they may not be readily obvious to the casual observer, playground hazards which result in injury often involve either:

• faulty or defective playground equipment;
• improperly maintained playground equipment;
• inadequate surfacing beneath playground equipment;
• inappropriate height of playground equipment;
• inadequate supervision of children during school hours;
• failure to utilize age-appropriate playground equipment; and/or,
• failure to post signs warning of potential safety hazards.

In an effort to prevent unnecessary playground injuries the Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) as well as the American Society for Testing and Materials (ASTM) have adopted standards to regulate play sites and equipment. These standards are frequently updated including extensive revisions in 2005. For a public playground safety checklist see http://www.cpsc.gov/kids/kidsafety/plgdlist.pdf. For a home playground safety checklist see http://www.cpsc.gov/cpscpub/pubs/pg1.pdf.