CAN WE ELIMINATE SERIOUS INJURIES THROUGH LEGISLATION? Part 2
Step 2 – Whose Path of Action is Most Realistic and Reasonable to Measurably Reduce Serious Injury?
By Kenneth S Kutska, CPSI, Executive Director
International Playground Safety Institute, LLC
November 30, 2013
THE QUESTION:
Which came first? The chicken or the egg. Man has been pondering this question forever and now I feel like I am in the middle of the same conundrum with regards or performance requirements for play equipment versus performance requirements for impact attenuation surfaces within the play equipment use zone.
THE ANSWER:
The answer from ASTM F15.29 Subcommittee’s perspective with regards to the future direction of the F1487 standard is not so easy. Our Subcommittee has never been able to identify and analyze each and every piece of play equipment prior to its entry into the marketplace. We continue to struggle with coming up with specific equipment requirements not addressed by the general performance requirements for each of these play components in a timely fashion. My simple answer to this question is, “Not in my lifetime.”
BACKGROUND:
The staff of the U. S. Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC Commission) presented a letter addressed to me as Chair of the American Society for Testing and Materials (ASTM) F15.29 on May 20, 2013. This letter was a follow-up to a written comment dated May 10, 2012 from CPSC staff regarding the F15.29 (12-03) ballot item #6. In this letter, it was noted that the specific types of playground equipment in section 8 of the ASTM F1487 Standard (balance beams, climbers, upper body equipment, sliding poles, slides, swings, swinging gates, merry-go-rounds/whirls, roller slides, seesaws, spring rockers, log rolls, track rides, roofs, and stepping forms) do not appear in the definition section of the standard. CPSC suggested we define these types of equipment in the terminology section of the standard.
The ASTM F15.29 Subcommittee discussed this letter during the May 20, 2013 meeting. The discussion continued into our Working Groups breakout sessions. The Subcommittee members in attendance concurred with the CPSC staff’s findings that it is difficult to keep up with the marketplace and define these new items in any timely fashion due to the speed at which the industry introduces new product into the marketplace from around the world. While the CPSC staff feels the lack of more definitions to address new variations of play equipment may lead to differences in interpretations of the standard resulting in some products not meet the appropriate performance requirements of the ASTM F1487 Standard. As a CPSI Course Instructor, I receive questions from CPSIs conducting compliance audits on how to evaluate these new products. The NRPA CPSI Course suggests a common sense approach to this dilemma as part of the course curriculum. The curriculum says we should not be claiming something is not compliant with the ASTM voluntary industry standard just because it does not fit into one of the existing types of specific equipment performance requirements. This approach does not appear to go far enough for everyone concerned. So what should we do? The purpose of the standard is to protect the children by eliminating known hazards and reduce or even eliminate serious debilitating injuries and death. I think we can all agree we have made significant contributions to this end however there will always be some serious injuries and even deaths and they may occur on a perfectly standard compliant playground. Can anyone protect everyone from every possible accident or a child’s own unreasonable actions?
Do you think it is reasonable and responsible to expect ASTM or CPSC to attempt to define each and every play component and/or variation of each type along with related additional specific equipment performance standards? The current playground equipment catalogs from around the world compared to those of just ten years ago demonstrate how many new play opportunities have been created. Many of these were never contemplated when the CPSC created their first handbook for public playground safety in 1981. The CPSC and the ASTM have been playing catch-up ever since the first standards and revisions of the 1990s. I have to ask if such a massive undertaking would do if anything for the prevention of serious playground injuries. I also have to ask whether the CPSC’s request would be considered a step towards improved equipment performance requirements or a step towards restricting or dictating design.
In a draft letter to all members of ASTM F15.29 Subcommittee I expressed my belief that any attempt to define each and every type or variation of play component is impossible if we are to stay within the scope of our performance based voluntary industry standard. ASTM F1487 is not a design standard even though we seem to arrive at this notion within the current standard on certain specific equipment types. During informal discussions and at our November ASTM F15.29 meeting some suggested our efforts to implement the CPSC Staff’s recommendation, while well intended, would become a time consuming and very expensive exercise in futility and an impossible process to strategically manage. This process will end up costing ASTM Subcommittee members an enormous amount of human and financial resources and we would never ever get to all the different types before new types of play components enter the marketplace. The ASTM democratic balloting process used in standards development is open and participative democratic process and therefore it is a lengthy process. It would take years of commitment and effort to accomplish such a task on the backs of volunteers, many of whom spend their own resources to participate in the standards development process. We have to ask what will have been accomplished in the short term, say two or three or even 5 years down the road, to reduce the frequency and severity of serious injuries? I first suggest we evaluate what measureable reduction in the frequency and severity of NEISS reported injuries has occurred over the past twenty years.
I predict that if we implement the course of action being suggested in the May 20th letter the ASTM F1487 standard and CPSC Handbook will become even more design restrictive while not addressing the existing hazards which result in truly serious injuries as defined in the ISO TC83 Committee’s technical paper on terminology. While this report has not been published I can see that it has gathered much international consensus and could give us something tangible to use as we attempt to focus on the big issues, such as life threatening and permanently debilitating injuries.
The ASTM F1487’s scope states,
“This consumer safety performance specification provides safety and performance standards for various types of public playground equipment. Its purpose is to reduce life-threatening and debilitating injuries.”
So where are we today in reducing these types of injuries? I believe we have made progress in reducing deaths and debilitating injuries in public playgrounds primarily in the area of head and neck entrapment and entanglement but I do not see a reduction in the frequency of injuries being tracked by the CPSC. Based on the fact that CPSC and the NEISS injury data reflect little or no reduction in public playground injuries it suggests we might be approaching the injury prevention issue from the wrong point of view. We seem to continue on the same path of trying to close the barn door after the horse as already left.
CPSC states that over the past few years the design of playground equipment has undergone some radical innovations. In general, we all need to make sure that known safety standards are being addressed. Both ASTM and CPSC support innovations in playground equipment and believe playgrounds serve an important function in childhood development. The CPSC Staff stated it so well in their May 20, 2013 letter,
“playgrounds should allow children to develop physical and social skills, and part of that development.”
We can both agree new, innovative playground components should still follow the safety performance recommendations that both CPSC staff and ASTM F15.29 Subcommittee have worked to refine over the past several decades. We both can agree with the CPSC statement,
“Staff asks that the subcommittee recognize that the recommendations in the Handbook and the requirements in the standard are designed with respect to the hazards posed by the type of equipment.”
We also agree with the statement in the CPSC Handbook, Section1.6,
“Because all playgrounds present some challenge and because children can be expected to use equipment in unintended and unanticipated ways, adult supervision is highly recommended. The handbook provides some guidance on supervisory practices that adults should follow. Appropriate equipment design, layout, and maintenance, as discussed in this handbook, are also essential for increasing public playground safety. A playground should allow children to develop gradually and test their skills by providing a series of graduated challenges.”
Section 1.7 Playground Injuries states,
“The recommendations in this handbook have been developed to address the hazards that resulted in playground related injuries and deaths. The recommendations include those that address:
• The potential for falls from and impact with equipment
• The need for impact attenuating protective surfacing under and around equipment
• Openings with the potential for head entrapment
• The scale of equipment and other design features related to user age and layout of equipment on a playground
• Installation and maintenance procedures
• General hazards presented by protrusions, sharp edges, and crush or shear points
Section 2.4 Surfacing states,
“The surfacing under and around playground equipment is one of the most important factors in reducing the likelihood of life-threatening head injuries. A fall onto a shock absorbing surface is less likely to cause a serious head injury than a fall onto a hard surface. However, some injuries from falls, including broken limbs, may occur no matter what playground surfacing material is used.”
All this being said I personally suggest the ASTM F15.29 Subcommittee, responsible for industry performance requirements for public playground equipment, spend its time promoting child development through innovative challenging play opportunities following best industry performance specifications and not focus on trying to identify and define each and every type of equipment including all the variations as CPSC recommends in their May 20 letter. I would suggest our time be best spent on continuing our efforts towards a hazard based approach to addressing a measureable level of injury reduction based on the current NEISS injury data analysis and the ISO definitions for hazard based risk assessment and the definition of serious injuries based on accepted medical analysis.
What would help with either of these recommended courses of action are universally accepted definitions and descriptions of a level of injury we can all agree on and relate efforts for reduction of these injuries back to our standard’s scoping statements. This would better define our mission and the types of injuries the standard performance requirements are attempting to address. I believe this course of action best supports child development and supports more innovative equipment that challenges children at all levels and advocates for healthy risk during free play. The course of action taken should also support those playground owner/operators who are attempting to create such creative challenging spaces while giving equipment manufacturers and designers the freedom to meet the markets expectations without restricting international free trade. Limiting liability to all for unreasonable misuse is something that needs to be addressed if we are going to successful in this endeavor. In Germany, parents have a legal obligation for the health and safety of their children and if their children are injured they will be held accountable. This sounds very reasonable to me and something North America needs to promote.
The standard development process the ASTM F15.29 Subcommittee has successfully embraced, over the past few years, is to address serious injuries through a thoughtful playground equipment safety performance based analysis following a strict hazard based approach to known hazards and current injury patterns. Risk assessments should be conducted by trained and experienced playground designer/manufacturer that looks at not just the intended design use but reasonable foreseeable misuse. We soon will have a set International Standards Organization (ISO TC 83) terms and definitions that will have been accepted by the international community. Many international standards organizations contributed to the development of this list and definitions and I hope to be able to release this list once approved. These terms will help guide the risk assessment process used by the designer, manufacturer, and perspective buyer of public consumer products developed for use by children under the age of 14. Play equipment is just one of these products. I hope these terms will be used by those involved in conducting safety compliance inspections of public playground equipment areas and organizations responsible for the creation of playground safety standards and guidelines.
The one missing link in reducing serious injuries on playgrounds might just be the impact, or lack thereof. ASTM F1292 Standard has had on the reduction of the frequency of falls related injuries. ASTM F15.29 follows ASTM F8.63 Subcommittee’s ASTM F1292 Standard as created and modified by this Subcommittee. This Subcommittee must be an integral partner in the future plan of action between ASTM and CPSC. Leaving out the impact attenuating playground surfacing requirements in future discussions will more than likely result in no meaningful reduction in serious injuries. The challenge is for all involved to come to some agreement on what the surfacing impact attenuating thresholds used in the ASTM F1292 standards should be. What need to understand what this outcome will be with some level of assurance that predictable falls from play equipment to the surface will provide enough energy absorption to address some predetermined level of injury likely to occur from the play equipment’s fall height.
Next month I will discuss the type and severity injury we can likely expect when falls occur to surface systems currently compliant with the ASTM F1292 Standard and how this relates to the level of injury ASTM F1487 performance requirements are attempting to address.