|  | Public Health Safety | Outdoor Safety

Playground Safety Inspection Tools

Playground safety is essential for encouraging children to participate in active play outdoors. The National Recreation and Park Association (NRPA) is committed to ensuring playgrounds are certified as safe for children, and reducing the risk of accidents caused by faulty or poorly-designed equipment. The NRPA offers training and certification programs for playground safety inspectors, who are responsible for ensuring each playground adheres to safety standards. Inspectors use special playground safety equipment to test the safety of playground equipment.

  1. Safety Checklist

    • The most important component of any playground safety inspection tool kit is a safety checklist. This checklist identifies possible problem areas or safety hazards for playground equipment, and lists safety standards. For example, the NRPA's "dirty dozen" checklist advises that no playground equipment should have openings between 3.5 to 9 inches, because openings of these sizes may cause children to try to slide through the openings and become entrapped at the head.

    Web Stop Probe

    • The web stop probe is another key playground safety tool. This tool is a model of a child's finger with working joints, and it is used to inspect small openings that could potentially pinch, crush, or tear a child's fingers. Safety inspectors can use this tool to explore narrow openings, rough edges, and sharp corners on playground equipment.

    Probes and Protrusion Gauges Kit

    • Probes and Protrusion Gauges kits are issued by the NRPA as well as by independent playground safety inspection organizations. The probes are three-dimensional plastic templates designed to mimic a child's body parts. They are used to evaluate the safety of rigid and non-rigid openings on playground equipment, testing for possible head, neck, and torso entrapment.

      Protrusion gauges are a series of plastic rings of varying diameters and thicknesses. They can evaluate the potential of hardware, pipes, posts, and other structural elements of a playground to cause injuries.

Outdoor Safety - Related Articles