Certification How Important Is It?
Injuries as a result of falls still account for up to 70% of all injuries in the playspace and the total number of injuries is on the rise rather than diminishing. The question is whether the existing Standards are able to address the issue or is the lack of inspection to the Standards and follow-up repair and maintenance the culprit? Are the injury opportunities, a circumstance or set of circumstances that could result in an injury being created by designers, manufactures, installers and owner/operators?
The latest statistics for Canada are available for the year 1996 and indicate that each year, "more than 10,000 Canadian children are injured on playgrounds". This study reported that what could be termed generally as falls (fell off equipment to bad landing) accounted for 72% of injuries. There is a tendency to understate the number of injuries as the collection of statistics in Canada, as prepared by Health Canada using the CHIRRP, are generated in only 15 hospital reporting centers across the country and then extrapolated. The injuries that are dealt with in family practices, walk in clinics and non CHIRRP hospitals are not specifically reported.
The National Electronic Injury Surveillance System (NEISS) of the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission considers injury data from hospitals, doctor,s offices/clinics, ambulatory surgery centers and hospital emergency rooms. In 1998 the total number of injuries for individuals under 20 was 509,650 with a total cost of US $9.8 billion. This cost includes medical, legal and liability, pain and suffering and work loss expenses. The highest cause of the injuries is impact with the surface or another piece of equipment, 74% with falls to the "protective playground surface" being 58% of total injuries. Consistently injury reports stipulate "inadequate surfacing" as the cause of an injury. If a determination is able to be made after the occurrence of an injury that the surface was inadequate, why can this determination not be made before and the problem responded to prior to the injury. Could it be that the surface in actual fact is adequate and the injury is not preventable, given that certain children will challenge themselves and the playspace as part of their normal activity.
The National Electronic Injury Surveillance System (NEISS) of the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission considers injury data from hospitals, doctor,s offices/clinics, ambulatory surgery centers and hospital emergency rooms. In 1998 the total number of injuries for individuals under 20 was 509,650 with a total cost of US $9.8 billion. This cost includes medical, legal and liability, pain and suffering and work loss expenses. The highest cause of the injuries is impact with the surface or another piece of equipment, 74% with falls to the "protective playground surface" being 58% of total injuries. Consistently injury reports stipulate "inadequate surfacing" as the cause of an injury. If a determination is able to be made after the occurrence of an injury that the surface was inadequate, why can this determination not be made before and the problem responded to prior to the injury. Could it be that the surface in actual fact is adequate and the injury is not preventable, given that certain children will challenge themselves and the playspace as part of their normal activity.
