Improved safety standards are needed to better protect younger children at playgrounds.

ABSTRACT: Playground-related traumatic brain injuries (TBIs) in children remain a considerable problem world-wide and current safety standards are being questioned due to historical reasons where the injury thresholds had been perpetuated from automobile industry. Here we investigated head injury mechanisms due to falls on playgrounds using a previously developed and validated age-scalable and positionable whole body child model impacted at front, back and side of the head simulating head-first falls from 1.59 meters (m). The results show that a playground material passing the current testing standards (HIC < 1000 and resultant linear acceleration <200 g) resulted in maximum strain in the brain higher than known injury thresholds, thus not offering sufficient protection especially for younger childr

SUBMITTER: Li X 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6180095 | biostudies-literature | 2018 Oct

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature