Yet Another Reason to Keep Your Kids Away From McDonald’s
Those “playlands” are seriously contaminated. As noted by the LA Times:
On a humid Monday morning, Erin Carr-Jordan was crawling through the tubey slides of a McDonald’s PlayPlace on the West Side.
When she got to the top of the colorful structure, she peered through a cloudy plastic window and mouthed the words: “This is bad. This is really bad.”
In recent months the 36-year-old mom and developmental psychologist from Arizona said she has visited and videotaped more than 50 such playlands as well as sending swabs for microbial testing.
…A reporter crawled through a few minutes later to find sticky surfaces, filmy windows, several broken pieces of equipment, food morsels in every compartment, trapped hair, garbage and thick black schmutz in most crevices.
…University of Arizona professor Chuck Gerba, who is one of the nation’s foremost authorities on germ transmission notes that children are major virus passers. “And viruses which cause diarrhea can survive up to a month on surfaces” such as playgrounds, he wrote in an email to the Tribune. “Bacteria like MRSA could also be transmitted by this route.”
Carr-Jordan has been sending her swab samples to a lab that she said found staphylococcus and other bacteria. Annissa Furr, a microbiology professor in Arizona, is working with her to collect and analyze the data to spur legislators to act on the issue.
[youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h6GOGJUiXVE]
Gross! If the crappy food doesn’t keep people away from McD’s et al., Maybe Carr-Jordan’s revelations will.
July 18, 2011
EEEEEEEWWWWWWW! Gggaaarrrroooooooossssssssss!!
July 18, 2011
Yeah… nasty, ain’t it? Given the way that these play areas are constructed, I’m sure it’s difficult to keep them clean and sanitary (there are a ton of crevices and difficult surfaces – those ubiquitous ball pits are a good example of the latter). But franchisees could at least make the effort… there’s no excuse for allowing visible crud to accumulate.
July 20, 2011
That is awfull! I’m glad when my son was little he never did much of the McDonald’s playland thing, but I know a lot of kids that did!!!!!!!!