Shredded tires don't belong on playgrounds.
Even if your PTA is flush with cash don't put this toxic trash on your playgrounds.
You can just smell the shredded tires and know your kids shoudn’t eat or inhale the stuff. Why put it on playgrounds when wood chips or pea gravel work fine?
This sanctimonious rant is prompted by a new section of playground at the Wilson Elementary School where I often take my kids to play. The whole playground had wood chips and it was prefect. Now, there is a new shredded tire (aka “crumb rubber”) floor is now slowly off gassing and leaching VOCs and heavy metals into our kids environment. Why! (I scream into the abys). Does the PTA not know that wood chips are classy?
Close up, the raw materials look like large black asbestos and smells like an oil refinery.
Wood chips have the added benefit of not off gassing or leaching heavy metals.
The glue that holds it together is polyurethane. Awesome.
Its a playground where kids play. Don’t over think it. Just don’t add toxic trash and it will be fine.
There are lots of articles that explain the health risks of “crumb rubber” play surfaces. Just google it… or just go smell the rubber… or read how degrading tire-rubber stabilizer is killing salmon. Playgrounds with older crumb rubber have 10x the lead levels than those without it.
The decision to not replace wood chips with rubber should be an easy one. Wood chips have no unknown risks associated with them. “Crumb rubber” has literally hundreds of known and unknown risks. Leave the wood chips.
End rant.