"Parents should be advocates for safer local playgrounds," said Nancy Loughry, a consumer caseworker for Mercer County Community Action Agency. "Unfortunately, we easily located many unsafe playground surfaces and equipment that can lead to injuries and death."

In their sixth national survey of public playgrounds, the Pennsylvania Public Interest Research Group, a non-profit public interest advocacy group, and Consumer Federation of America surveyed 1,037 playgrounds in 36 states and Washington, D.C., including 12 in the Mercer County/Brookfield area. The researchers focused on the hazards that cause the most serious playground injuries: falls, impact with moving swings, entanglement and head entrapment. Hard surfacing, equipment that is too high and swings that are too close together pose preventable hazards to children at a majority of public playgrounds across the country, according to the survey.

Because 80 percent of all injuries are caused by falls, protective surfacing under and around playground equipment is critical. At 73 percent of playgrounds across the country, researchers found inadequate surfacing. In the Mercer County/Brookfield area, 58 percent of the playgrounds surveyed had inadequate surfaces. The report also found that 60 percent of climbers and 58 percent of slides in the area were more than 6 feet high. Nationally, 52 percent of climbers and 35 percent of slides were too high. "Children face serious injury on playgrounds when they fall from equipment that is too high onto surfacing that is too hard," Loughry said.

Impact with moving swings causes 69 percent of all swing injuries. Swings that are too close to each other or to other equipment increase the chance that a child will be hit by a moving swing. Swing spacing hazards were found at 45 percent of playgrounds in the Mercer County/Brookfield area, and 49 percent nationally. Surveyors also found that children can face strangulation hazards at 38 percent of the locally surveyed playgrounds, because of head entrapment and clothing entanglement dangers caused by gaps, protrusions and other similar hazards.

The groups also found that 14 percent of the playgrounds they surveyed across the country and 12 percent of the local area surveyed playgrounds were made of wood that may be pressure-treated. Some pressure-treated wood may contain chromium copper arsenate, a known carcinogen.

"We urge local authorities to test their playgrounds made out of wood for CCA. Children should not be exposed to toxic chemicals as they play on playgrounds," Loughry said.

The groups noted that nine localities and 15 states have passed some form of regulation to protect their children from playground hazards. These regulations come in many forms and by many authorities -- the strongest laws mandate safety requirements for playground design, installation and maintenance in all public playgrounds, while the weakest merely recommend that child care providers take a class on product safety. In the absence of a mandatory federal law, the groups stressed that state and local advocacy efforts an crucial to protecting children from unsafe playgrounds.