New Tiles Installed on Butler Elementary Playground Help Prevent Injury

By Melissa Bregani - Fort Dodge Messenger staff writer

 

"When's recess? When do we get to play? "Shouts like these are heard in classrooms throughout Fort Dodge, and elsewhere in the country, every day.

 

School children love to run outside and jump on slides, swings, seesaws and other pieces of playground equipment. More than likely, they don't worry about hitting their head or getting a scrape.

 

A new surface recently installed at the Butler Elementary School playground will help kids stay safer while they play. The final pieces of rubber safety tile - made from recycled tires - were put into place at Butler Wednesday morning.

 

Funding from the Iowa Safe Surfaces Initiative made the project possible. The safe surfaces initiative is a joint partnership of the National Program for Playground Safety and Welch Products, funded via the Iowa Legislature.

 

Tim Mahoney, of Welch Products, was on hand to celebrate the project's completion Wednesday. Mahoney explained the rationale behind the tires installation.

 

"The object is to measure how much rubber tile surface improves playground safety versus other methods, like wood chips and sand." He said

 

Welch products is one of the few companies in the world that manufactures the tiles.

 

The installation at Butler brings the number of schools in Iowa using the rubber surface to three; Mahoney said a total of 14 to 20 schools in the state are expected to have the tiles installed.

 

Butler was one of the schools chosen at random, according to Heather Olsen, program coordinator for the National Program for Playground Safety at the University of Northern Iowa.

 

"Once selected, schools had to comply with different agreements," Olsen explained. The agreement included compliance with Consumer Product Safety Commission standards. The entire playground layout also had to be deemed safe.

 

"The surface is only one fourth of the components of playground safety," Olsen remarked. "Other elements include age appropriate designs and equipment maintenance."

 

A training course was offered for chosen schools to learn about the different area of safety, "so they would buy in to the concept of a kid safe playground," Olsen said

 

In the next year, both pre-and post-injury data from participating schools will be studied to determine the effect the tile have on keeping kids injury-free.

 

Olsen also stressed the importance of the rubber tiles as a suitable playground surface. Familiar surfaces like grass and concrete are not appropriate.

 

"The tiles have been CPSC tested and have consistent fall height integrity," Mahoney stated, meaning they have a cushioning affect if a child were to fall on them.

Maintenance costs are greatly reduced and cleanliness is higher with the new tiles. They're expected to last 20 to 30 years

 

"The kids are not tracking into the building," said Principal Jerry Spittal "The tiles are beneficial to the health and safety of the kids and cleanliness to the building" He feels it's a great addition to the school.

 

"The idea of taking something that's an environmental hazard (tires) and recycling them into something useful and beneficial, it becomes a great product," Spittal said" Its fantastic; the kids really do like it."