As a parent, it is your duty to ensure that your children are safe at all times. However, this does not mean that you do not allow them to have fun. Nonetheless, when it comes to the safety measures when dealing with commercial playground equipment, there are a few dos and don’ts that will help you guide your children to a safe environment full of learning and fun.
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, there are about 200,000 children who are aged 14 and below that receive treatment in emergency rooms every year for playground-related incidents; this is a call to help reduce the risk present in playgrounds.
Acceptable Surfaces
When it comes to ensuring that the construction of playgrounds should be 100% safe, it would be best to consider the surface under the equipment first. A high surface will minimize any impact of falls. Furthermore, if you allow your children to play at a park where there is concrete, grass, asphalt, or packed dirt, it would best to find a new park.
Some of the acceptable surfaces include poured-in-rubber, rubber or synthetic tiles, sand or pea gravel, wood chips, and engineered wood fiber. Even with the use of these as materials for the surface, children will still fall. However, a fall onto wood chips will only cause minor injuries as compared to when you fall onto concrete, which could definitely threaten lives.
Line of Sight
The best way to avoid injuries is to ensure that your children are not doing anything drastic or dangerous. Nonetheless, even with appropriate commercial playground equipment, proper adult supervision should also be present. Both indoor and outdoor playgrounds should always have adequate lines of sight where parents or guardians can efficiently supervise what the children are doing so that they can stop them at any crucial moment.
Closed Hardware and Hooks
Impalement and entanglement are two things you would not want to get your children involved with while they are having fun at the playground. Certain types of injuries happen when children’s clothing get entangled or attached to hooks or when protruding hardware pierces your child’s body.
These are things every parent and playground designer or supervisor should be worried about. Nonetheless, there are a few things on the checklist to ensure that this type of injury is far from reality. The first thing one should do is to close both S and C hooks. It is also essential to cover bolts and secure ropes to avoid forming a noose.
Barriers and Guardrails
Children love to climb, and there are certain playground gears that are definitely made for climbing. As they tend to climb to higher grounds, the risk and severity of the fall increases. Barriers and guardrails can be 20 inches or higher depending on the age of the children playing. Furthermore, it is important not to let younger children play with barriers that are designed for older ones.
To ensure that your children will enjoy their time at the park without having to cause any injury, these are the things a parent or guardian should be wary about. Furthermore, knowing and identifying which playgrounds are safe is a good start!
If you are looking for the best source of top quality commercial playground equipment, contact General Recreation today. You can also visit our website and browse through our catalog of products.