Dangers of kids' ball pit play areas

Ok, another myth. Received one in the mail this morning. Actually, two copies of the same email. Of course, me being me, I decided to investigate a little.

I'm just going to copy over my whole email response.

Hi All!

Back on the job. This one’s a tough one to handle, so I’ll be as careful as possible.

First off, we should all note that any environment, if not properly managed, is potentially dangerous.

The warning circulated below is an old one, dating from the late 1990’s. However, it’s been given a new lease on life several times over the years, doubtless when someone just encounters the tale, or digs it up to share it with someone after some conversation on safety. It happens. In this case, the Word document was last saved by Colleen & Trevor Bellman, using Microsoft Word 10.0 (that’s old software), on 16 May 2008. This suggests that the alert originates in North America (I know, judgement call there), and is most likely more applicable to that area. Nevertheless, some things apply everywhere, so this still bears investigating.

So here’s the deal on the warning: It’s false. At least, the warnings about the deaths. No verifiable incidents as those described in the warning have ever happened. Follow through to Snopes for more info:
http://www.snopes.com/critters/snakes/ballpit.asp

Another source of info is at BreakTheChain.org, and this one matches the text in the “Alert.doc” forwarded below more closely:
http://www.breakthechain.org/exclusives/ballpit.html

And finally, for an unraveling of the syringe aspect of the story, back to Snopes:
http://www.snopes.com/horrors/parental/archer.asp

Synopsis: No evidence of any snake-related deaths or syringe-related deaths from children’s ball pits.

Now, here’s where it gets slightly tricky. All the sources above do concede that ball pits are not the cleanest of areas, with some questionable items occasionally found in them, of the kind mentioned in the “alert”. However, most businesses spot clean the play areas daily, with a more thorough cleaning at least once a week. At least, that should be the policy. So, the smart thing to do would be to check with the management of any place that has these kinds of play areas on their cleaning policy. If you want to be extra careful, ask to see the cleaning log to know when was the last time they cleaned the pit and the individual balls.

I say this to protect the franchise owners, because they also suffer from the spread of these rumours. So, if you are a franchise owner, or know one, maybe you should ensure that the cleaning policy suggested above is implemented, enforced, and transparently reviewable.

In the end though, what this “alert” is really trying to get everyone to do is to be more vigilant about the safety of our children.

Conclusion: Dismiss the reports of deaths; be alert for cleanliness.

Your Internet sleuth,

Already I’ve gotten a response saying, “why take the risk?” Which is a valid response. But it misses the point. The point is, any environment, if not properly managed, is potentially dangerous.

And, yes, I sign off these kinds of emails as the “Internet sleuth”, since I rely on the Internet as my source. That opens up a whole 'nother discussion on reliability of sources, which I'm not going to go into here.