I tried to watch, but all I saw was an ad. It's too early in the morning to be sold to.

I've never seen it before, but it doesn't surprise me if the wood chips got wet. We've all seen mulch piles that smoke or steam because of decomposition.

One of the things I do for work is design and have playgrounds installed/upgraded. I have never seen this before.

At mid-day, I am showing up at a few sites and watching them blow in tons of these chips, in anticipation of the start of school.

Pea gravel is a horrible choice for a playground surface. I suppose the best is either rubber tiles, or a poured in place resilient layer, both of which are prohibitive.

But, Yikes!

So now they're considering removing the highly-combustible wood chips from all playgrounds, I suppose? *sigh* The nerf-ing of America continues apace. What's next, scraping the lead paint off the monkey bars? Taking the rusty nails out of the sandboxes? Installing brita filters on all the drinking fountains? (You can't unpoison water, people!)

Let's let kids be kids. If that means little Timmy sometimes scrapes his knee on gravel after falling off the merry-go-round, so be it. If that means little Suzie sometimes spontaneously bursts into flames while sliding down a white-hot sheet of aluminum, so be that, too.

These things build character; without which, we're little more than a nation of robots. Is that what you want? To live in a world of robots? Sure, they're efficient and impervious to bee attack, but there's one small drawback you just might have overlooked:

ROBOTS HAVE NO SOULS!!!

Reminds me of this; scroll down to "Case No. 2--Five Fatalities."

It's all very horrible, but I can't help imagining a kind of reverse clown-car here.

Atom Eyes, I can't ascertain your point.

This is a very real-world sitch for me. I have responsibility for around 40 or so playgrounds. We have used a number of surfaces. I was one of the early adopters of wood chips, in that they seemed to combine all the attributes that are desirable over shavings, pea gravel, rubber chips, sand, etc. etc. My school district used to MAKE the stuff, before it became commercially available.

I also know something about lead paint and about municipal drinking water, in addition to the common ways that kids get hurt on playgrounds.

What I don't know is whether you think that the environments we have kids in are patently unsafe, or whether you think that we go overboard in protecting kids from perceived (but not real) hazards.

Please clarify.

I remember being a kid and wishing I could break my arm like all my friends did; it was cool to wear a cast around. But try as I might, even after jumping off the slide, flinging myself from swings, letting go of the jungle gym while hanging upside-down, I was cursed with rubber bones. Sure, I might go flying over the handlebars of my bike and down a twenty-foot deep ravine, get all scraped up, poison ivy up the butt, or I might be the kid with fifty bee stings on his neck from fucking with a nest at recess, but I could never earn myself the coveted arm cast. I broke a toe once, but all I had to do was tape it to the adjacent one. No fair. I wanted a cast!

I remember wanting orthodontic braces, too. After I got those, my cast ardor cooled a bit.

danf: I was just riffing on the cranky old man type of response these stories tend to elicit on web forums. I have no idea if playgrounds are more or less safe now than in the olden days. For the record, I do not approve of the spontaneous combustion of children.

Is pea gravel really "softer"? In the video, they looked and sounded like rocks. Rocks don't strike me as soft. Now shredded tires, that stuff is the shit.

I've definitely heard about it before. Same type of thing happens with compost heaps or piles of mulch that aren't properly maintained. That stuff gets hot.

I hate the fact that they replaced the small annoying rocks that get stuck in your shoes with woodchips that get stuck in your leg in most playgrounds, not that I visit enough playgrounds to make an appreciable difference in my life.

What happened to sand in playgrounds? That's what was in playgrounds when I was a kid. Sure, you might get an abrasion or two, but at least it didn't poke into you like woodchips can.

Did anyone else actually wax slides with torn open soft drink cups? Wheeeee!

Pea gravel= fine under structures, but out on pavement, it's like walking on marbles. And anything loose you use WILL migrate. One staffer at my school is permanently disabled from slipping on pea gravel on asphalt.

Sand= when wet, then dry, has the cushioning ability of concrete.

Getting stabbed by woodchips- we call them "shards" of wood. We try to get chips that are more carefully ground up.

There is no perfect playground ground material. They all have their pros and cons. Younger son's school has wood mulch. It's more favorable over sand in my opinion. Sand gets everywhere. I pour out 3 tablespoons of sand per sneaker every day after older son's school day.

The playground down the street has "waterless grass". It's bright and green and plastic, but soft, and I kinda like it.

LoriFla, just looked at that waterless grass stuff and requested info. It looks interesting and I have never heard of it before.

Thanks for the tip.