Playground safety: the long trail.

It is now more than 20 years since the gauntlet first was thrown down in a challenge to the federal government, the municipalities, and the producers of playground equipment to create safer outdoor play environments for children. In 1979, two petitions were filed with the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC), asking that children's injuries on playgrounds be addressed in light of some staggering statistics - an estimated 170,000 playground injuries per year serious enough to be reported to hospital emergency rooms.

After review, the CPSC agreed to undertake the project and created a safety standards panel of 12 individual, professional, and industry representatives to develop a safety standard for public playground equipment under the direction of the National Recreation and Park Association (NRPA). This panel offered a proposed standard in 1976, which was rejected by the CPSC. The NRPA role as project leader was ended, and the job of creating the standard was turned over to the CPSC staff and the National Bureau of Standards. The Citizen Safety Standards panel became a review and advisory group to the CPSC staff.

The CPSC ran out of time and money before it could do in-depth research and testing for a safety standard, but the organization determined that it would be better to publish some kind of guidelines to make playgrounds safer, rather than publish nothing at all. Thus, in February 1981, the CPSC published its Handbook for Public Playground Safety, the first ever federal guidelines designed to reduce the number and severity of injuries on the public playground. The handbook was published in two volumes, one with technical information and the other in lay language, so that parents, teachers and recreation leaders could be watchdogs in relation to goings-on in their community and school playgrounds.

Design Revolution

The 1970s heralded a new and revolutionary era in playground equipment design. From the traditional swing set, single standing slide, and see-saws, designers began to create play systems that linked both children and activities in continuous patterns of play. In the preceding decades, the playground emphasis primarily had been on physical fitness and muscle development; the focus now shifted to socialization, creativity, and imaginative play. The same platforms - linked together with play components - could be used as ships, forts, houses, or whatever the child could envision. And, in line with the global attention to environment the materials used shifted from hard steel and galvanized metal to environmentally friendly wood. By the time the 1981 CPSC handbook was published, the revolution was well underway.

The handbook identified hazards that caused severe injury or death and offered testing procedures in some cases, quick-fix solutions in others. Tests for swings, measurements for head entrapment, and heights for guardrails were part of the 1981 handbook in volume two; volume one suggested such instant solutions as color-coding equipment for age differentiation and painting rungs in different colors for better space perception. Without prior research and testing, it could not be foreseen that color coding could not be enforced in the public park or that it might entice younger children to use apparatus that was not designed for them. Nor did anyone know that painted rungs might provide different depth perceptions. And gaps in careful language negated the use of all guardrails, which was not the CPSC's intent.

The greatest problem faced in parks and recreation was in the area of surfacing under equipment to cushion falls. While the 1981 handbook established a benchmark for impact attenuation on surfacing (more than 200 g's could cause skull fracture), it failed to identify - other than including a warning not to install over concrete or asphalt - which surfaces and depth of surfaces should be used. There were no maximum heights established for playground equipment in the handbook, since it was understood that the impact attenuation properties of a surface could be changed by increased depth to match the height of the equipment. The producers of synthetic surfaces could change the thickness of the rubber mattings for the height of the equipment; but those who could not afford to use synthetic surfaces had no testing data for depth on loose bulk surfaces such as sand, pea gravel, or bark mulch. And it was not until 1986 that a commercially produced loose bulk surface, made of engineered wood fibers, appeared on the market.

The CPSC handbook also failed to tell its readers how much surface under and around the apparatus should be covered with impact attenuating surface, although it recommended that the equipment producers advise their customers of how much surfacing to use. This, too, caused confusion, as producers struggled, without the base research, to provide this information to their customers.

Filling the Gaps

By 1988 the CPSC and the equipment producers recognized that steps were needed to correct the gaps and confusion caused by the 1981 handbook. The CPSC obtained a budget allocation and commissioned a study of information that had come to light since publication of the 1981 handbook. The study, called the COMSIS report, was extensive but only examined a portion of the available knowledge about playground safety.

The CPSC also conducted an in-depth study of playground injuries, far more sophisticated and detailed than originally had been examined for the 1981 handbook. The result of this study was a revised 1991 Handbook for Public Playground Safety, issued by the CPSC in November 1991.

At the same time the playground equipment manufacturers were facing increasing litigation, based on the 1981 handbook and its problem areas. Not knowing that the CPSC was working on revisions, the industry petitioned the American Society for Testing and Materials (ASTM) to develop a safety standard - rather than guidelines - for public playgrounds. It was industry's consensus that one national standard could be the basis for everyone's design to eliminate hazards and, ultimately, substantially reduce the amount and severity of injuries on the playground.

A volunteer committee was formed at ASTM; and in December 1993, the first national standard was published, F1487-93, Standard Consumer Safety Performance Specification for Playground Equipment for Public Use. As of this writing, F1487 is under revision, since not all safety issues were addressed at the time of its publication. This standard, developed by 140 committee members and approved by the ASTM membership, includes the expertise of designers, architects, equipment manufacturers, playground owner/operators, and other professionals.

14 Years Later: Still Revising

It is now 14 years since the publication of the first CPSC handbook, and we still are revising, rewriting, and rethinking the tenets of playground safety. Of course, this is not unusual as standards, guidelines, and/or parameters of any kind are as fluid as the environment and the society around them. In the decade following publication of the 1981 handbook, the popularity of materials used in equipment has shifted twice - from unpainted metal to wood and back to painted, colorful metals. Personal, attentive supervision in the public park setting virtually has disappeared; and growing instances of litigation has forced us to examine where we are going in playground safety.

Today there are many books, dozens of articles, and many videotapes available on the subject. We have expert opinions in abundance, but not many are based on true research. Unfortunately, personal opinion and experts differing with one another and causing great confusion in the field muddy the clarity of rules. And the American Public Health Association and the American Association of Pediatrics have proposed playground safety standards.

Questions Yet To Be Answered

What percentage of accidents are caused by poor maintenance? How many are caused by the way children play? Do children play differently in the school play yard under supervision than they do in the unsupervised public park? And if so, why are there so many school accidents? We are aware that children, depending on how they fall, may be injured on the softest surface. So what percentage of injuries can be attributed to how the child plays or to chance?

To attempt to answer many questions about playground injuries, the ASTM standard was developed with direct assistance from the CPSC staff. The handbook and the ASTM standard address many of the same issues, but there are some differences. One of the revelations of the 1980s was that, although most playground equipment was designed to be used by children ages 5 to 12 years, more children under the age of five were playing in the parks. Therefore, both documents reflect a scope of equipment for children from 2 to 12 years old. Injury data has shown that head entrapment could be caused by the rung spacings recommended in 1981; so that has been changed to reflect new spacings and include body entrapment concerns for toddlers. And there now is a call for speed limitations on whirls.

But there are still differences. ASTM addresses accessibility for persons with disabilities, while CPSC does not. The pipe size on rungs is slightly different from one publication to the other.

Currently, efforts are underway to make the two documents more compatible. The 1991 CPSC handbook allowed tire swings to be attached to play systems, although it did not allow the same for to-fro swings. The ASTM standard requires all swings to be separate and apart from play structures; therefore, in November 1994, the CPSC issued a revised (3rd edition) handbook, in which tire swings may no longer be attached to the play structure.

Shortly after the ASTM committee began work on its standard, it became evident that there was an extensive amount of information that needed to be analyzed, evaluated, and disseminated to those involved in playgrounds. NRPA, which originally had spearheaded the CPSC project and always had been supportive of playground safety efforts, became the leader again, creating the National Playground Safety Institute. The mission of this institute was to provide and disseminate information that would make as many people as possible knowledgeable about playground safety; and one of its major goals was to ferret out the safety information from the many opinions so that professionals could be trained to identify safety issues and solutions.

Over the last four years, the National Playground Safety Institute has become the resource for the body of knowledge on playground safety. It has evaluated the published materials in the field and assimilated the comprehensive information needed to develop competencies in playground safety knowledge.

The institute has been approved by the National Certification Board of NRPA to provide certification for playground safety inspectors through seminars, course materials, and testing procedures.

To date, the test has been given half a dozen times, and several hundred applicants have become Certified Playground Safety Inspectors (CPSI).

Why Certification?

Certification is designed to ensure that the designee has acquired the approved and standardized body of knowledge about playground safety, that the application of this knowledge has been tested, and that the goal of promoting children's safety on the playground is in the process of being furthered. Attaining this credential - also means that awareness about what constitutes a hazard at play has been raised and that techniques for eliminating injury-causing situations have been learned. In short, the holder of the CPSI credential earned the competencies to upgrade playground safety levels.

The credential is attainable by all who are willing to study and learn the subject. Administrators, managers, designers, maintenance staff, play supervisors, teachers, and parents are among the many groups and individuals who seek credentials.

CPSI designation is not permanent. It must be renewed via written test every three years. This ensures that credentialed individuals keep up-to-date on playground safety issues, which is especially important in light of the considerable changes that rapidly take place in playgrounds. At the same time, children's play patterns are changing. just as we find younger children on the playgrounds than there were in previous years, we also see changed patterns of play.

Questions To Answer

There are many questions that must be addressed to ensure the future of playground safety. These include:

* Are children more aggressive in their play? * Should we be looking more closely at socialization patterns and their link with equipment? * Should physical development and fitness revisited as primary driving factors in product development? * Should schools take another look at meaning of "recess" and how it is handled? * Are we training supervisors to handle children on playgrounds properly? * What are the best training methods to reach the maintenance crews? * How do we prioritize safety problems for repair?

This last question is a big one, simply because the CPSC and ASTM documents have made the majority of equipment installed prior to 1994 obsolete as far as safety is concerned. We need to determine if "non-compliance" always means "unsafe"? We need more research, testing techniques, and learning opportunities to flesh out the body of knowledge of playground safety. New Type of Play Equipment

A new type of play equipment previously used in indoor family entertainment centers, is now in the public market, as indoor playgrounds begin to make inroads. New surfaces beneath equipment are under development. And new materials are in production.

The concept of "playgrounds for all children" has been around since 1970, but design of play environments for those with and without disabilities that really work is beginning to be the norm instead of the exception. Manufacturers are no longer simply producing apparatus; instead, they are basing the design that apparatus on both anthropometric data and patterns of usage. And designs now include attention to audio and visual stimulation, areas never before addressed. In short, we are facing some revolutionary changes in play and playgrounds, and certification is a tremendous opportunity to keep up with those changes and their implications for playground safety.

This year the ASTM will issue a revision of its standard, F1487. At the same time, the ASTM, CPSC, and the Canadian Standards Association will have started discussions on the possible development of a North American standard for playground safety. Once this is accomplished, the next step would be to seek an international standard, a natural and important part of the evolution. Only then can we be sure that children all over the world can play happily and safely.