Fun with arsenic, asphalt and strangulation

Warning: San Francisco Playground Ahead

Craig Ciekot

Warning: San Francisco Playground Ahead

Remember when you thought diving into the pit at a Jane’s Addiction show was living dangerously? Well, now all you have to do get that rush is take your toddler down to the local playground, where all kinds of extreme thrills await.

Earlier this year, the Chronicle published an article that detailed a survey of San Francisco’s playgrounds. Out of 130 examined almost half received a grade of C or lower.

What the city parks lack in marks they make up for with cool hazards such as outdated pieces of equipment that pose strangulation risks, hard asphalt surfaces and, best of all, older wooden structures that contain arsenic and other toxic materials.

While several playgrounds in hoity-toity neighborhoods such as the newly reopened Alta Plaza in the Upper Fillmore and Julius Kahn in Pacific Heights were updated with the latest in child-friendly gear, many others in less well-to-do neighborhoods such as Glen Park, Potrero Hill and even the Inner Richmond’s popular Mountain Lake Park are still getting by on dodgy old-school gear. Why? Because it’s funnier when poor people get hurt.

Activities that are not unlike playing in a sandbox in San Francisco:

Street luging, sniffing glue, mainlining DDT, naked rugby, white water rafting (without a raft)

What the scientists said:

“Pressure-treated wood can be especially hazardous when wooden posts erode with age and the embedded arsenic rises to the surface or sheds to the sand. Since children spend a fair amount of time in playgrounds, they are most vulnerable to the arsenic exposure. Through lab testing of the sand and ‘wipe’ tests of the wooden posts, the San Francisco Health Department determined that both the wooden play structures and the sand are the main sources of arsenic exposure…

Where have all the children gone? To a city with working swings.


Children spend a consistent amount of time at the playground and are in constant contact with equipment. Because they tend to not wash their hands (or wash them improperly) after playing in these wooden structures, they may be susceptible to any long-term toxic effects of arsenic contamination.” Poisoned Playgrounds, May 2002, San Francisco Department of Public Health’s Enviro-Times Newsletter

Related links:

2006 San Francisco Playground Report Card (.pdf)

And that’s why there are more dogs than children in San Franciso – not that the dogs have it any better.

Aidin Vaziri