The American Society for Testing and Materials publishes technical documents and reports for use by playground equipment engineers, manufacturers and maintenance staff. The information includes performance specifications for playground equipment. The Consumer Product Safety Commission, a federal agency, publishes a handbook on playground equipment, surfaces and equipment maintenance. As a case in point, she cited the injuries and subsequent lawsuits involving small trampolines. The lawsuits have made them vanish from schools.
Parents working together can make a difference, however.
In a suburb of Pittsburgh, an early 1990s grass-roots effort led by Susan DeFrancesco, now a faculty member at the Center for Injury and Policy Research at the Johns Hopkins School of Hygiene and Public Health, did get local laws for playground safety passed. DeFrancesco says theirs may be the only local playground safety ordinances in the nation. Dermatologists say that children get 80 percent of their lifetime sun exposure by age 18 and that a child born in 1999 has a one in five chance of developing the deadly skin disease. N.Y. Expected to serve as a national model, the tarplike covering shields the playground's equipment from the dazzling and harmful rays of the sun. On the other hand, when the weather gets cooler and children wear hooded sweat shirts and jackets, accidental strangulation on the playground becomes a real threat.