Kian Mehran-Lodge, 5, with photo of his feet, which were burned in a Brooklyn playground. Alvarez/News
These city playgrounds aren't for child's play.
Black rubber mats designed to break a child's fall turn blistering hot in the summer, soaring to higher than 165 degrees, a Daily News investigation found.
Doctors at two city hospital burn units reported seeing 16 to 18 young children with playground burns a year, mostly from the mats under junglegyms and sliding boards.
"I have nightmares," said Anne Casson, whose toddler son, Will, ditched his shoes at Carl Schurz Park on the upper East Side one day last May.
"He stepped onto the black mats and was screaming hysterically," Casson said. "When I picked him up, the skin was just hanging off his feet."
The baby spent four days in New York-Presbyterian Hospital Weill Cornell, where doctors administered morphine for intense pain.
The News, accompanied by NYC Park Advocates, took the temperature of mats under junglegyms at playgrounds in all five boroughs last Friday.
"It is unconscionable that the city continues to install products in playgrounds that hurt the most vulnerable park users - small children," said Geoffrey Croft of NYC Park Advocates, who took a 166.9-degree reading on the mats at Carl Schurz. "How many more have to get hurt until someone is held accountable?"
The News requested recent statistics on the number of burns at the 1,000 city playgrounds, but Parks Department spokeswoman Jama Adams said there were "no incidents reported."
The Cassons sent a letter to city officials with a graphic photo of their son's injuries.
Parks Commissioner Adrian Benepe said signs were posted in playgrounds warning against going barefoot.
"We're not going to remove [the mats]," Benepe told The News. "Our playgrounds are the safest in the world."
Reyhan Mehran, a marine scientist from Carroll Gardens, Brooklyn, said her son Kian Mehran-Lodge was 14 months old in July 2004 when he was burned at Van Voorhees Park.
"We cannot understand why the city wouldn't immediately remove material that is known to severely burn children," she said.
Doctors said the highest temperatures measured on the mats could cause burns in less than a second.
At 140 degrees, it "takes about three seconds," said Dr. Palmer Bessey, of New York-Presbyterian's burn center, which treated two playground burns within the last two weeks and treats six to eight each year.
A recent U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission handbook recommended lighter colors for playground surfacing.
