The importance of outdoor playgrounds having safety certificates

To reduce the risk of accidents with children during activity in outdoor playgrounds, it is important that the elements that make up the equipment are designed and manufactured with characteristics that make dangerous situations such as entrapments, collisions or falls from great heights difficult, in addition to avoiding possibility of user contact with unsuitable materials such as toxic paints or surfaces and structures decomposed by excessive wear.

These safe characteristics have been studied and tested by entities and associations of the most diverse origins all over the world. Based on these studies, they have developed their sets of technical standards which manufacturers and park installers must respect and incorporate into their designs, and by complying with these requirements they can obtain their compliance certificates according to the current standard in each country.

In some countries, public entities or governments are already obliged to require these certificates from suppliers that manage to obtain public contracts for the installation of outdoor or indoor playgrounds, but in others they have not yet reached this level of control together with the local suppliers.

By requiring suppliers to comply with safety requirements when installing playgrounds for outdoor areas, the risks of injury caused by accidents are considerably reduced, children will be more protected. In addition, consequently, problems with issues of responsibility for the maintainers due to situations that occur in the recreation areas are also avoided.

In the different sets of safety regulations, it is unanimous that the instructions for use of the equipment and safety recommendations are clear and visible in the spaces adjacent to the games, and it is the responsibility of the parents or guardians of children to get to know the rules and characteristics of a game, so that they can guide and accompany the children during the activity.

Some of the most important features for the safety of children are:

· Protections with minimum sizes that hinder unexpected falls.

· Do not use toxic materials or materials that break easily.

· Materials should not suffer excessive attrition due to humidity, cold, extreme heat, salinity or biological agents.

· Protections at crucial points that prevent access to prohibited areas of the playground.

· Corridors or spaces for movement without dangerous points or internal corners.

· Grip and support points with appropriate sizes according to the age group allowed to use the playground.

· In games such as chain swings, the metal links must have minimum and maximum opening sizes to avoid entrapment of the fingers.

· Floors with minimum impact attenuation required according to the height of fall possible under a module or structure.

These are some of the standards required worldwide:

Europe: EN1176

United States: ASTM F1487

Brazil: NBR 16071

Australia: AS4685

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