Bounce House Safety Research Continues

If you've ever been to an event with a bounce house such as a birthday party or a carnival, you know just how much children enjoy them. But are they safe? Researchers from the UGA department of geography have been trying to find answers to this question. Last summer, we wrote about geography associate professor John Knox's class research project on bounce house safety. Knox had a bounce house set up near the geography building so students could learn more about possible safety hazards.

Bounce houses and other inflatable amusement devices are known to be vulnerable in windy weather. Knox and his young researchers hope to determine what weather conditions are optimal to avoid bounce house accidents and look at policy changes, such as better safety guidelines, that might help prevent weather-related bounce house injuries.

The class has compiled reports on 40 weather-related bounce house injuries in the past nine years. The inflatable structures have been lofted into the air or blown over in dust devils, waterspouts, post-cold frontal winds and outflow from thunderstorms. Students will collaborate and conduct research using the data and then co-write a publishable paper together once the class has finished.

In conjunction with this study, colleague Marshall Shephard, Georgia Athletic Association Distinguished Professor and director of UGA’s Atmospheric Sciences Program, also took temperature measurements for two days. Shepherd presented the research at the American Meteorological Society Meeting in New Orleans this week. InsideScience has the story:

"I was watching my son playing in a bounce house, and the temperature was about 92 or 93 degrees F outside," said Shepherd. "When he came out, he looked like he was on the verge of a heat stroke."

Shepherd and his colleagues conducted a small study over the course of two days in July in Georgia. They set up a bounce house and outfitted it with sensors on both the outside and inside, which reported air temperature and wind speed every two minutes. On each day the summer sun beat down, and the outside temperature measured greater than 90 degrees F.

Shepherd and his team found that at the hottest time of the day, the temperature difference between outside the bounce house and inside could vary between 8 and 10 degrees F. Further research needs to be done, but in the short term, Shepherd and his team recommend that parents limit the amount of time their kids spend inside the inflatable structures and make sure the kids drink plenty of water to stay hydrated. In the future, Shepherd would like to see bounce houses have more ventilation. 

"We'd also like to learn more about how metabolic heat (from the kids jumping around) and perspiration increase the temperature inside the bounce house," said Shepherd. "We want to make parents aware of this risk and eventually this could lead to changes on bounce house policies and design."

More informative research from the UGA department of geography and the atmospheric sciences program. Keep up the great work. Read the abstract from the conference is available here or check Shepherd's Forbes article on the topic from this summer.