Playgrounds Grow Up: Unsafe Seesaws, Sandboxes Replaced

NEW YORK - Seesaws and sandboxes are things of the past. Monkey bars are an endangered species. And places where kids can hide are too scary for grown-ups.

Today's playground aims to be safer, cleaner and less prone to lawsuits than those of decades past. Critics who see rough-and-tumble fun as a vital part of childhood disapprove, but playground experts say the new equipment is reducing serious injuries.

"We don't want to take all the excitement out of the playground - the risk-taking, the fun, the ability to succeed," says Fran Wallach, a board member for the National Program for Playground Safety. "On the other hand, we want to remove all the hazards."

Nationally, more than 200,000 children a year are injured seriously enough on playgrounds to require trips to emergency rooms. The most common serious injuries are broken bones, but for children 4 or younger, almost 60 percent of the injuries involve the face or brain.

Despite the statistics, experts say playground safety has dramatically improved.

"Compared to a generation ago, playgrounds are so much safer," says Tracy Shelton, who helped survey playground safety for the New York Public Interest Research Group and found that the city's playgrounds did well compared to others around the country.

"It used to be that if you fell, you were probably going to break something. You were falling from a higher height and on to a harder surface."

Now, thanks to rubber surfacing, a kid who loses his grip can fall on his shoulder and get up without so much as a bruise.

New York was the first U.S. city to put rubber mats under all equipment. It also was the first city to fence off every swing set to keep kids from getting kicked as they run by. You won't find old-fashioned rectangular monkey bars either. They've been replaced by boxy, colorful climbing structures with interconnected ramps, rungs, ladders, steps, slides and guard rails.

New York City is undertaking its most ambitious program of playground renovation since public works czar Robert Moses built 650 outdoor play spaces around the city in the 1930s, '40s and '50s.

Sandboxes are being removed because people allow their dogs to relieve themselves in the absorbent sand. Tunnels are out of style because parents get nervous when kids can't be seen. Sprinklers have replaced unsanitary wading pools. And seesaws are going because kids fall off or plunk down so hard they injure their spines.

Some parents complain the new playgrounds are boring and accurately blame the fear of litigation for some of the changes.

"I think they're maybe being made too sterile in the interest of avoiding lawsuits," says Michele Herman, a Manhattan mother of two. "It's sad, the loss of all the seesaws. It's a shame, this whole generation, growing up without them."

Because 90 percent of lawsuits involving playground injuries are settled out of court and leave no paper trail, it's difficult to assess their impact, says Donna Thompson, head of the National Program for Public Safety. But city Parks Commissioner Henry Stern acknowledges the problem.

"We live in such an antiseptic, risk-free society," Stern says. "You want to eliminate the obvious hazards. But you're dealing with children at play who are out to show they can do something they couldn't do last week. So you tend to get the blandest, least challenging playground equipment because you don't want some lawyer to say, `The playground is a trap.' "

In Manhattan's Harlem neighborhood, a pediatric surgeon led a crusade to improve playgrounds. Dr. Barbara Barlow of Harlem Hospital noticed a lot of kids coming in with injuries from the street - being hit by cars, falling on concrete - because local playgrounds were full of drug addicts, homeless people and broken equipment.

Barlow took her findings to Stern, and he renovated every public playground in Harlem - 18 since 1990. They are kept so clean children can go barefoot in the sprinklers without fear of broken glass. The public health benefits are gratifying.

"Our major injuries have decreased 55 percent," Barlow says. "In the past we might have seen 350 seriously injured kids in a year. Now we see between 120 and 150."