School play equipment ‘dirtier than the toilets’

Play equipment poses a health hazard for young children, a study suggests.

Testing for germs at two schools revealed high levels of bacteria on objects such as toy dinosaurs and a class mascot teddy.

More bugs were found on play gear than on door handles, in bathrooms and in sinks.

luke Rutterford, of Rentokil, which conducted the tests, said: ‘Play equipment and shared items such as pens and pencils are used regularly throughout the day but rarely cleaned, providing lots of opportunity for crosscontamination.’

The ‘play’ dinosaur tested at one school registered a contamination reading 41 times higher than that obtained from a toilet door.

Testers swabbed 130 locations at the infant and primary schools in the south of England and tested the samples using a hi-tech microbe detector. From the results, they produced ‘heat maps’ showing the areas where cleansing was most needed to prevent outbreaks of infection.

Mr Rutterford added: ‘These findings may surprise many, as it is not necessarily the

‘Contagious illnesses’

objects and areas they would associate with being unhygienic, such as toilets, but instead items that are shared and used by multiple children which appear to be harbouring the most germs.’

across the two schools, the top five hot spots hosting the most bugs were play equipment, door handles, radiators, stationery and chairs.

The dinosaur registered a reading more than 15 times the top of the normal range.

Both schools co-operated willingly with the tests but chose to remain anonymous.

The technique used, called aTP bioluminescence, measures light given off when a biomarker reacts with a firefly enzyme. The marker is adenosine triphosphate (aTP), an energy molecule in all living cells, including bacteria.

aTP is not found in viruses, so the technique cannot detect viral contamination directly. But the bacterial hot spots identified by the test are also the most likely to harbour infectious viruses.

Mr Rutterford added: ‘accurately heat mapping a school’s microbiological landscape enables informed decisions to be made on where and how to clean.

‘In turn, this could ensure that any outbreaks of highly contagious illnesses such as norovirus are contained sooner, and significantly reduce the levels of pupil and teacher sickness.’

aTP testing forms part of Rentokil’s Hygiene Healthcheck service aimed at premises used by the public.