Fun, danger share playgrounds

Warm weather draws children to the playground like lady bugs to roses. But the laughter will be, at some point, punctuated with shrieks.

Each year, about 940 Utah schoolchildren are injured seriously enough to require a doctor's care — and that's just on elementary school playgrounds. It doesn't count those in public parks or the family back yard.

Consider these incidents cited by the Utah Department of Health injury prevention program's latest report on school playground injuries:

• A fifth-grader sliding down the fire pole slips and fractures his arm.

• A second-grader playing at recess tries a back flip out of the swing, breaking both arms. He's out of school for more than a month.

• A fifth-grade girl hangs upside down by her knees on a bar and tries to flip and land on her feet. Instead, she fractures a leg and misses nine days of school.

• A third-grader is swinging at recess when it breaks. He lands on his head and is hospitalized for two days with a brain injury.

• A first-grader playing before school jumps out of the swing, but his backpack catches. He needs five stitches in his elbow.

• A kindergartner jumping from one piece of equipment to another falls and fractures his wrist, is hospitalized for 10 days and needs several surgeries.

The most common school-related injuries to children K-6 occur on the playground, according to the Violence and Injury Prevention Program report, which examined injuries for the five school years from 1999-2000 to 2003-2004.

In that time, 4,703 elementary school students were hurt, wracking up 5,043 missed school days, 270 calls to 911 and 74 hospitalizations. And those were just the injuries reported to the state, so it's very likely an undercount — perhaps as little as half, according to Carol Peterson, health department student injury specialist.

The school playground injury report included only injuries that required medical attention of at least half a day of missed school. There's no official count of injuries that occur on nonschool playground equipment.

Three-fourths of injuries on playgrounds are from falls. The most common injuries are possible fracture/broken bone (54 percent), cuts (17 percent), and bumps/bruises/contusions (9 percent), according to the school report.