Many playgrounds designed for safe play by children pose a potential threat due to inadequate design, inspection and maintenance, says a recreation safety expert at the University of California, Davis. He proposes parents follow a playground safety checklist. "Each year more than 200,000 children nationwide receive emergency-room treatment for playground injuries and about 15 of those accidents are fatal," said Seymour Gold, a professor of environmental planning who helped draft playground safety legislation for the state of California in 1990. "Those accidents are all the more tragic because most could have been prevented by inspecting the playground equipment." Parents should not wait for cities or schools to improve their inspection and maintenance of public playgrounds, he said. Instead, parents and other concerned citizens can do their own inspection of neighborhood playgrounds, checking to make sure that the facilities are in compliance with U.S. Consumer Product playground safety guidelines. "We don't want to frighten parents, but to empower them," said Gold, who stresses that the following 10-point safety checklist also should be used when purchasing and installing home playground equipment: * Is there adequate protective surfacing under and around the play equipment? Loose-fill materials, such as wood chips, mulch, sand or pea gravel should be 12 inches deep to protect against injuries from falls. Studies indicate most playground injuries result from falls. * Are pieces of play equipment too close together? The "fall zone" under or around the equipment should be free of obstacles. * Is any equipment too high above the ground? Platforms should be no more than 7 feet high for school-age children and 3 feet for preschoolers. * Are swings too close together or too close to the support structures? Swings should be at least 24 inches apart and 30 inches from the nearest support structure. * Do elevated surfaces have guardrails or protective barriers to prevent falls? * Does the play equipment have any potential head entrapment hazards? Openings that are between 3.5 inches and 9 inches present a head-entrapment hazard because they are large enough to permit a child's body to slip through, but too small to permit the head to go through. If children enter such openings feet first, they can get their heads caught and strangle. * Does play equipment have any potential entanglement hazards, such as open "S" hooks, on which children may catch clothing or anything else around the neck. Many playground deaths are due to strangulation. * Does any of the hardware present dangerous protrusions or projections? Does any hardware appear to be loose or worn? * Are there any exposed moving parts that might pinch or crush a child? * Are there exposed footing or environmental obstacles such as rocks or roots that might cause a child to trip or sustain other injuries? "The message we want to convey to parents is that there is hope and help for improving the safety of our playgrounds," said Gold, noting that any shortcoming revealed by this checklist should be reported immediately to the public agency charged with maintaining the playgrounds. The time and money spent on inspecting and repairing or replacing playground equipment is a wise investment for local governments, he stressed. "Our studies show that for every $1 spent on prevention, $100 to $1,000 is saved in injury settlements and legal fees," said Gold. A national authority on park and recreation planning and management, Gold has served as a consultant on recreation safety to the U.S. Consumer Products Safety Commission, the National Safety Council and many federal, state and local park and recreation agencies and professional organizations. In 1995 he received the National Recreation and Park Associations Professional Honor Award in recognition of his research and contributions to public policy and professional practice. As part of his research on hazard management in public parks, Gold has established at UC Davis an extensive library on recreational safety.