Fast-food playlands fail test
On a humid Monday morning, Erin Carr-Jordan was crawling through the tubey slides of a McDonald’s PlayPlace on Chicago’s West Side.
“This is bad. This is really bad,” she said.
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.
“Without a doubt this was one of the worst and definitely in the top five,” she said after climbing out of the tubes. “There was food everywhere.”
Carr-Jordan, who is combining her playland testing with a family road-trip vacation, says she’s seen similar conditions in many restaurants across the country.
She’s found that some fast food companies regularly clean their playlands and are happy to provide customers with their cleaning protocols she singles out Chick-fil-A but that representatives of Burger King, Chuck E. Cheese and McDonald’s have either indicated they don’t have any such protocols or have not responded.
Her activism began this spring after she followed her toddler through an Arizona McDonald’s playground and was shocked by the filth. “It was unacceptable, completely unacceptable,” said McDonald’s spokeswoman Danya Proud, who said the video caught the attention of the restaurants’ corporate offices in Oak Brook, Ill. “But it is not reflective of our business and our restaurants. As far as I’m concerned it was an isolated matter. And we took immediate corrective action to thoroughly sanitize the PlayPlace.”
McDonald’s says it requires the facilities to be thoroughly cleaned each day and the area kept free of debris and soiled surfaces. Burger King said its standards require “daily, weekly and monthly cleaning of playground equipment, pads and foams,” as well as professional cleaning on quarterly basis.
Chick-fil-A corporate spokesman Don Perry said there are regular cleaning schedules for the establishments that offer play areas. And Chuck E. Cheese said it has eliminated ball pits, requires that “all existing play equipment is cleaned with sanitizer” and removes graffiti. Both of these companies noted that hand sanitizer is available at the playlands.
She said she’s found alarming conditions in rich and poor areas alike.
Joan Rose, a co-director of the Center for Advancing Microbial Risk Assessment at Michigan State University, said she is not familiar with Carr-Jordan’s findings but stresses that places that serve children need disinfection policies.
“Kids often are exposed more (they put their hands in the mouth more often) and are also more vulnerable to more severe illness,” Rose wrote in an email. “It is extremely important that the industry (like McDonald’s), facilities themselves and states have good public health policies around cleaning and disinfection. These can be evaluated and monitored so we know we are achieving a safe environment for our kids.”
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