December 2014 - Parks & Recreation - 56

Operations
New Playground Criteria
Adopted Amid Controversy
By Richard J. Dolesh

ew, more restrictive changes to the safety standard for playground surfaces that are intended to lessen the chance of head injuries from falls has
been adopted by a key subcommittee of ASTM, formerly known as the
American Society for Testing and Materials. If formally approved by ASTM, the
nonprofit international organization that sets standards for testing and materials,
this new standard could have a significant impact on public playgrounds across the
nation, leaving them out of compliance with the newly revised standard or resulting in as-yet unknown retrofitting costs to meet the new criteria.
NRPA has opposed adoption of
these new criteria because of a lack
of specific evidence of serious head
injuries to children caused by falls
on playground surfaces that meet the
present safety standard. And even
though NRPA's arguments against
changing the standard were upheld
as persuasive this past spring, the
subcommittee on playground surfacing voted to approve the changes
to the standard before it even heard
evidence from a task group that was
formed to study the issue.

Of the 250,000 playground injuries annually, the Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) estimates more than 40 percent result
from falls. With recent public and
media attention on preventing head
injuries in youth sports, there has
been keen interest by parents, park
and recreation administrators, and
advocates for play in making playgrounds safer for all children.
Changing and updating standards
for materials for the purpose of providing greater safety is nothing new

The depth of engineered wood fiber surfaces like Zeager Bros.' WoodCarpet
can be easily measured to ensure impact criteria are met.

54 Parks & Recreation

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for ASTM. The organization has been
in the business of testing and reviewing standards for materials such as
steel, cement, electrical conductors,
non-ferrous metals and many other
types of materials and services for
more than 100 years.
However, the process by which
the new criteria for playground surfaces were recently approved caused
a number of committee members
to question both the rationale for
the change and how it was adopted. Some felt the more restrictive
change to the existing standard was
not based on relevant data, nor was
there was sufficient direct evidence
of head injuries that would be cause
for changing the standard that has
been in place for more than 20 years.
In fact, one committee member,
Jeff Mrakovich, director of surfacing products for Zeager Companies,
a national manufacturer and distributor of playground surfacing, said,
" We just allowed a change in criteria
to a standard that has been in place
for 21 years with not one reported
serious head injury on a surface that
met the current criteria. "
Some members of the playground
surfacing subcommittee also called
into question the way relevant data on
playground head injuries was made
available to the committee. After a
review of negative votes on an earlier
proposal to change the criteria, a task
group was formed to evaluate the best
available data. However, before the

December 2014 - Parks & Recreation

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