The hot summer in the city means even hotter temps at area playgrounds – where scorching heat left play mats under jungle gyms hitting 167 degrees last week in Manhattan – parents and park-advocacy groups warned yesterday.
Geoffrey Croft, head of NYC Park Advocates, said the city has to do more to warn people about the heat hazards lurking in playgrounds.
His group tested temps around town over the weekend and found dangerously high readings all over.
The black, tiled mats used under the jungle gyms across the city clocked in as high as 166.9 degrees Friday.
That same mat yesterday in partial shade reached 136 degrees.
Swing seats reached 138 degrees.
“The city refused to take responsibility when they’re installing a product that has repeatedly proved to hurt the park’s most vulnerable users – young children,” Croft said at a press conference at Carl Schurz Park on the Upper East Side.
“Playgrounds are supposed to be oases, not creators of emergency-room visits.”
He claimed that dozens of kids end up in burn units every summer after getting injured in hot playgrounds – like 18-month-old William Lodge.
The toddler suffered second-degree burns last year when he ran out of the sandbox barefoot to the jungle gyms, said his parents.
“It was so bad, they [the hospital staffers] thought he’d been electrocuted,” said his father, James Lodge, 39, of the Upper East Side.
Lodge and a group of local parents want the city to stop using the black mats in Carl Schurz Park. They also want better signs warning people of the heat dangers, and shading put around certain areas.
Reyhan Mehran’s son spent three days in the hospital after suffering second-degree burns in 2004 while playing in Van Voorhees Playground in Brooklyn.
“He was a child that never cried, but he cried so much he lost his voice and kept crying without sound,” Mehran said of her son Kian, who was just 14 months old at the time of the injury.
“And that stuck with me, the amount of pain he was in.”
Parks Commissioner Adrian Benepe admitted that the black mats do get very hot but said they’re in use all over the country because they help reduce head injuries and broken bones when kids fall.
“All of the playgrounds have signs that say to wear shoes,” he told The Post.
“All of our playgrounds, particularly those that have been rebuilt, meet the latest safety standards.
“There’s probably as many kids who get burned on pool decks and on the beach sand [as at the playgrounds].
“It’s common sense. Children should not go outdoors in New York City without wearing shoes.”
Even switching the mats to a lighter color wouldn’t make them noticeably cooler, Benepe said.