Child receives burns from sizzling hot safety mat at playground
10:10 a.m. Thursday, July 24, 2008
Download:
Note: The footage in the video above may be disturbing to some audiences.
The danger was right below Will Casson's feet.
"As soon as he reached the rubber mats he screamed. He was on the rubber mats maybe five seconds. My wife picked him up, looked at the bottom of his feet and the skin was hanging off of his feet," Will's father, Rich, said.
2-year-old Casson landed in a hospital burn unit by doing something seemingly harmless at a New York City playground.
He kicked off his shoes and ran right onto scorching hot mats, meant to protect kids in a fall.
Instead, Will suffered second-degree burns, suffering so much, his dad says, he was convulsing.
Even on a moderately warm day the black mats can get extremely hot, so hot that one New York hospital says it only takes a couple of seconds for a child with bare feet or bare hands for that matter to get burned.
Parents say the solution is cover the playgrounds with canopies, replace the black mats with a lighter color, or at the very least post more detailed signs near the mats explaining the potential danger.
The Consumer Product Safety Commission tells CNN the number of children burned from mats is small, saying: "Our number one playground issue is children falling off apparatus. That's our main concern because that's where the deaths occur."
New York's parks commissioner says it's not practical to replace the mats at a cost of $150 million.
"It hurts me when a kid gets burned, but it hurts a lot worse when they crack a skull and you can't recover from a cracked skull," New York City's Parks Commissioner Adrian Benepe said.
49 News spoke with Stormont-Vail, and they have not treated any children for these types of burns, but have heard of cases where children have gotten blisters on their hands from slides.
Post a comment
(Requires free registration.)