Playground Equipment Fall Heights

Playground design trends have been evolving to include higher and more complex playground equipment, which require testing and certification of the FallZone surfacing material to higher fall heights to ensure the safety of our children.

As part of the national study of public playground equipment and fall-zone surfacing that conducted safety testing on various playground surfacing materials to study injury rates at different fall heights. The results show an increase in head injuries as fall heights increase. So making sure you have the proper FallZone Safety Surfacing for your playground is vital. Issues associated with unsafe impact attenuation products that are not maintained like wood chips, sand, pea gravel sharply increase the risk of serious injury. 

The study also revealed that equipment above 8 feet has close to three times the injury rate when compared to shorter/lower equipment.

At higher fall heights, the playground surfacing is more likely to be found non-compliant with the current ASTM F1292 standard. Loose infill surfaces evaluated in the field demonstrate non-compliance at fall heights below 9 feet, with an increase of non-compliance above 9 foot fall heights. Unitary surfacing products like FallZone Safety Surfacing demonstrated a increase in compliance with ASTM playground surfacing impact attenuation standards at fall heights above 6 feet.

We recommend limitations on playground equipment height and stricter standards for playground surfaces used with equipment above 9 feet. Unitary surfaces that do not move like the FallZone Poured-in-Place safety surface is ideal for fall heights above & below 6 feet. We also remind that playground surfacing material must be adequately maintained and its performance periodically verified.

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