Danger Sneaks Up On You

Wow, two weeks in a row of boogeyman-style headlines! 

You can tell that summer is over and I'm crabby because winter is coming :-(

To finish out the summer, we took our kids to Ontario Place which, for everyone who doesn't live in the Toronto area, is a large park that's equal parts amusement, heritage display, event venue, and all around nice place by the water. In the kids area, they had an attraction called Atom Blaster which was a multi-level indoor game where kids could shoot soft foam balls at each other (but mostly at their parents). It teaches kids about how atoms work, but mostly it's a safe, kid-friendly version of paintball.

Except that it's not safe.

I'll bet that every piece of the equipment is inspected regularly and it all looks very well maintained, so I'm sure the consensus is that it's perfectly safe. And as far as the overall fitness of the equipment and design of the attraction, I'd agree that it's fine.

But there's one area that no one seems to be checking, and that's an area that's definitely NOT safe. Atom Blaster is insanely LOUD. All of the gadgets that shoot the foam balls around use compressed air, so every time one of them goes off, there's a deafening blast of white noise accompanying it. The venue itself has a relatively low ceiling and hard plexiglass walls, so there's little to deaden that noise. Topping it off, each gadget needs to be loaded with foam balls so when they do go off, they're invariably surrounded by a bunch of kids.

Where I was standing (in the viewing area for crusty old people) the blasts had to be approaching 100 dB. Right in front of the things, where all the kids were, it was easily 120 dB.

As many of you know, I spent my youth touring with a variety of bar bands, so I've had plenty of exposure to painfully loud rooms (and in fairness, since my instrument is the drums, I've often contributed to that painful noise level). Atom Blaster brought back unpleasant memories of those days by giving me that sick, dizzy feeling that you get when the noise level is too high.

Sure, it's not gonna kill anyone, but prolonged exposure to excessive volume does do long term damage to the ears. Even brief exposure can be damaging if the level is high enough.

At some point, something bad will happen (either an injury to a guest, or an inspector who shuts them down) and when that happens, Ontario Place will be falling all over themselves to demonstrate how quickly they can respond. Unfortunately, by then it will be too late. 

I know I'm preaching to the choir here, but maintaining a safety culture isn't about reacting after the fact - it's about working proactively to identify and correct potential problems BEFORE they blow up in your face. Danger sneaks up on you from the most inconspicuous places, so you have to check every dark corner to flush it out and deal with it.

And if you take your kids to Ontario Place, take ear plugs!