The International Standard Organisation has convened the first meeting to develop global standards for playground equipment and surfaces. Public Works Professional speaks to Australia's delegate to the committee about local consequences.

By Frances Sacco

A global standard for playground equipment and surfacing standards could be reality in the next few years. Although the process is in the earliest stage of infancy, Australian experts in the field are hopeful it will lead to safer designs and easier trading conditions.

Furthermore, there are unlikely to be any drastic changes for public works professionals to consider. Kidsafe NSW Playground Advisory Team Program Manager Kate Fraser says the international standards should not cause too much concern amongst Australians concerned with the manufacture or installation of playground equipment.

“There are not going to be huge changes from the perspective of public works,” she says. “We are second guessing that they will base the ISO on the EN, which is the European Standard, because so many countries (including Australia) use versions of the EN.

“It would make it easier for trade if we all referred to one international standard.”

Fraser says Australia was already in the process of updating its standards to reflect the more recent version of the EN and suggested interested parties keep abreast of the changes through the Standards Australia bulletin.

The first meeting of the International Standards Organisation ISO/TC 83 Sports and Recreational Equipment Committee dealing with the issue was held in Berlin in October.

David Eager, the Chairman of the Australian Standards Committee For Playgrounds and Playground Surfacing, was appointed as the Australian delegate.

The Associate Professor of Electrical, Mechanical and Mechatronic Engineering at the University of Technology Sydney believes reaching consensus on a global playground standard could take several years. There are several standards in operation across the world and each has key differences. 

“The major difference [between the Australian and European standards] is the maximum free height of fall,” Eager says. “In Australia it’s 2.5 metres.

“In 2004, when Australia published the current standard, we had seen no evidence that the impact-attenuating surfacing being installed in our playgrounds could handle falls from three metres, even though the Europeans had the higher three-metre limit for many years and had noted no increase in their injury data.”

By contrast, the American Standard doesn’t have a limit on the maximum free height of fall. As long as the impact-attenuating surface can absorb the fall, it is acceptable. 

Disability access is another difference between the American and European standards that will have to be reconciled.

“In Australia, not every playground has to comply with disability access, which means councils can dedicate their limited resources to having one or more quality regional playground,” Eager adds.

“In America, every playground must comply with disability access rules, including the size of the decks and ramps and the inclination of those ramps.”

The common ground between the two major global standards, however, is in the rules surrounding entrapment. The standards have common tests for bound openings where a child might become trapped at the neck or chest. 

No opening at a playground above 600 millimetres may be between 230 millimetres and 89 millimetres wide. There are also rules around finger entrapment, with the same test probes used in Australia as are used in the USA and Europe.

The third major point of similarity in these tests is the prevention of entrapment of a child’s clothing, such as a toggle on a hat or jacket, becoming trapped and effectively hanging the child.

One area where Eager hopes to influence the committee is the standards for roundabouts, or carrousels as they are known in Europe. While he said roundabouts are fine for playgrounds, the impact attenuation around them should be able to absorb the same impact as a two-metre fall, which is equivalent to the force exerted on a child flung from a moving roundabout.

The European standard only requires that soft falls around a carrousel absorb the impact of the fall directly to the ground, even though they can rotate at speeds up to five metres per second.

Where a country might want to differ from an ISO, they can have what are called ZZ appendices, where a country can add provisions specific to their region.

“I am hoping our ZZ appendices will be minimal and we will be able to align the Australian Standard as closely as possible to the ISO,” Eager says.

The importance of risk in child’s play

It is becoming more accepted that allowing children to take some risks is vital to their development.

Playground designers walk the fine line of providing an opportunity for children to engage in risk, while protecting them from serious harm. “We don’t want to cotton wool them or they won’t grow and develop,” Associate Professor Eager says. “We want them to fall some times. Even the occasional broken bone is acceptable.

“In fact that is written into our standards. Death is unacceptable, permanent injury is unacceptable, but the occasional broken bone is acceptable. 

“As engineers would know, we can’t make roads that are absolutely safe where nobody has an accident. In recent times we have lived in a bit of a nanny state when it came to playgrounds. But now councils are starting to take a bit more risk in what they are putting in and we are not seeing a rise in the injury level because of it.”

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