A Mother’s War on Germs at Fast-Food Playlands

Hits:2310 2011-11-22

GILBERT, Ariz. — One of those who kicked off her shoes and slithered her way through the multihued plastic tubes of a fast-food restaurant playground here one recent morning was not enjoying herself in the least. In fact, she had a frown on her face.

“It’s bad,” Erin M. Carr-Jordan said, swab in hand, as she collected samples from a surface that she would later deliver to a lab for microbial testing. Nearby, a restaurant worker diligently sanitized tabletops and banisters outside the play area, but he did not appear to use his rag and spray bottle inside the children’s maze.

Dr. Carr-Jordan, a child development professor and a mother of four from Chandler, Ariz., has visited dozens of restaurant playgrounds in 11 states in recent months to test them for cleanliness. What the inspections and lab analyses have revealed is the widespread presence of an array of pathogens, from coliform bacteria to staphylococcus, at levels that experts said indicated that restaurants might not be disinfecting their playlands as diligently as they should.

Those same experts pointed out that germs are everywhere and that they are not always dangerous. They add that hand washing is an important safeguard.

“I’m not shocked or blown out of the water, because this is my business,” said Philip M. Tierno Jr., director of clinical microbiology and immunology at NYU Langone Medical Center in New York, who surveyed some of Dr. Carr-Jordan’s results. At the same time, Dr. Tierno said, “There are very high counts, and that means these places are not cleaned properly or not cleaned at all.”

Dr. Carr-Jordan’s campaign, which has attracted the attention of the fast-food industry, began in April when she stopped at a McDonald’s near her Phoenix-area home because one of her sons needed to go to the bathroom. On the way out, her children asked if they could play in the children’s park, which McDonald’s calls a PlayPlace. She assented and accompanied her children inside.

What she saw was alarming.

“My kids were going, ‘Yuck!’ ” she recalled of the scene, which she videotaped with her cellphone and posted on YouTube. “It was gross and sticky. There were curse words and gang graffiti. The windows were black. There was matted hair and an abandoned Band-Aid.”

Despite complaints to the manager and several follow-up visits, the play area was not cleaned, she said. So Dr. Carr-Jordan, who has a Ph.D. in developmental psychology but is no expert in microbiology, had samples tested. When the results were analyzed by Legend Technical Services Inc., an environmental testing company, they indicated the presence of potentially harmful bacteria, and she began inspecting and testing the playgrounds at other fast-food restaurants in her neighborhood. Lab results — she has since switched to another commercial lab — showed that most were far from clean, she said.

Intent on showing that the problem was not an isolated matter, she has been mixing family vacations with her play area inspections. From New York to California, she has squeezed herself into the playgrounds at Burger King, Chuck E. Cheese’s, Peter Piper Pizza and numerous other restaurants.

Playtime, a Colorado company that supplies play equipment to McDonald’s and other restaurants, recommends on its Web site that restaurant operators regularly clean and inspect their equipment to keep a check on “smudges, ink, goo.” The restaurants say they have policies in place that require the regular cleaning of their play areas. Danya Proud, a McDonald’s spokeswoman, said the company had stringent sanitizing procedures but had nonetheless assigned a team to review those procedures in light of Dr. Carr-Jordan’s complaints.

“We’re human, and we make mistakes,” Ms. Proud said, indicating that McDonald’s considers cleanliness a priority.

Still, Dr. Carr-Jordan said that of the nearly 50 play areas she had tested, only one had come back essentially free of pathogens, and that was at a Chick-fil-A restaurant not far from her home. That is now the only restaurant play area she permits her children to visit.

To draw attention to the issue and push for legislation mandating stricter standards for play areas, Dr. Carr-Jordan, who teaches at Arizona State University and several other institutions, has formed a nonprofit group called Kids Play Safe. Her calls to health officials, from local health departments to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, have failed to prompt any crackdown, she said.

A C.D.C. spokeswoman, Bernadette Burden, said the federal agency would get involved only if called in by state officials concerned about a major disease breakout. In Maricopa County, which includes Phoenix, the Environmental Services Department considers play areas nonfood areas, and thus less of a priority during inspections than other parts of restaurants, said Johnny Diloné, a spokesman.

So Dr. Carr-Jordan, fast-food vigilante, continues to climb into tubes, wriggle through tunnels and slide down slides. After emerging from one play area she inspected in Arizona last week, she shook her head. “No one would want their child playing in there,” she said, “and that one wasn’t the worst.”

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