randomly selected balls were taken for microbiological analysis

March 27, 2019 11:05 AM

Are children's ball pits really 'riddled with killer germs'? [NHS Behind the Headlines] The 2018 study by researchers from the Univeristy of North Georgia in the USA "was covered in The Sun and the Mail Online, which carried accurate and balanced reports of the study that were sadly let down by over-alarmist headlines."

The study:
Oesterle ME, Wright K, Fidler M, et al. Are ball pits located in physical therapy clinical settings a source of pathogenic microorganisms? in the American Journal of Infection Control.

posted by readinghippo (45 comments total)

I think you could probably get alarming agar results swabbing anything that kids have touched TBH. Best not think about it.
posted by Artw at 11:12 AM on March 27, 2019 [9 favorites]

I worked at a Chuck E. Cheese's in high school, and every couple weeks an overexcited kid would poop while in the ball pit, which meant that after closing we'd have to run tray after tray of balls through the restaurant dishwasher to clean them. Frankly, I'm surprised there weren't more germs.
posted by bassomatic at 11:13 AM on March 27, 2019 [41 favorites]

Are children's ball pits really 'riddled with killer germs'? (yes)
posted by The Card Cheat at 11:14 AM on March 27, 2019 [25 favorites]

we'd have to run tray after tray of balls through the restaurant dishwasher to clean them.

Having seen a research greenhouse shut down because of bacteria the potting vessels picked up from having been washed in a commercial dishwasher. . . I wonder if this was actually doing what was intended. I guess it's better than not cleaning them.

Without some infection rate statistics, I have no idea what this means or whether it matters. The NHS summary doesn't help answer that question. But, I'm happy to know that a clinical ball pit is a thing that exists.
posted by eotvos at 11:26 AM on March 27, 2019 [1 favorite]

"Even when freshly washed and relieved of all obvious confections, children tend to be sticky." Fran Lebowitz
posted by jeribus at 11:26 AM on March 27, 2019 [30 favorites]

I worked at a Chuck E. Cheese's in high school, and every couple weeks an overexcited kid would poop while in the ball pit, which meant that after closing we'd have to run tray after tray of balls through the restaurant dishwasher to clean them.

Boy am I glad I have never eaten at a Chuck E Cheese's.
posted by jacquilynne at 11:27 AM on March 27, 2019 [7 favorites]

Boy am I glad I have never eaten at a Chuck E Cheese's.

I hear they have a big rat problem.
posted by enamon at 11:37 AM on March 27, 2019 [97 favorites]

If we dealt with the shocking child problem in ball pits, the germs would look after themselves.
posted by GenjiandProust at 11:46 AM on March 27, 2019 [22 favorites]

It's gonna turn out that our immune systems only work if we get sufficient exposure to killer germs, and as soon as we get the overall level of cleanliness up past a certain threshold, we're all gonna get wiped out by a slight cold.
posted by Sing Or Swim at 11:48 AM on March 27, 2019 [8 favorites]

Sing or Swim: In other words, the hygiene hypothesis will be proven correct.
posted by SansPoint at 11:50 AM on March 27, 2019 [5 favorites]

I worked at a Chuck E. Cheese's in high school, and every couple weeks an overexcited kid would poop while in the ball pit, which meant that after closing we'd have to run tray after tray of balls through the restaurant dishwasher to clean them.

You know, it's been a long time since my Auto-Chlor days, but I don't think you are supposed to put things contaminated with feces into the place where food dishes are supposed to get cleaned.
posted by thelonius at 11:59 AM on March 27, 2019 [28 favorites]

so you're saying one shouldn't wash one's shitty balls?
posted by chavenet at 12:01 PM on March 27, 2019 [12 favorites]

Metafilter: accurate and balanced reports of the study that were sadly let down by over-alarmist headlines

Just kidding, more like...

Science journalism: accurate and balanced reports of the study that were sadly let down by over-alarmist headlines
posted by tobascodagama at 12:06 PM on March 27, 2019 [3 favorites]

Metafilter: riddled with killer germs
posted by Hairy Lobster at 12:12 PM on March 27, 2019 [3 favorites]

Heh. From that link about the 'hygiene hypothesis':

>the majority of mammalian evolution took place in mud and rotting vegetation

This accurately describes my childhood.
posted by Sing Or Swim at 12:15 PM on March 27, 2019 [18 favorites]

You really can't play a proper game of Robotron without the joysticks being a little lubed-up from Pizza Time Theater pizza grease.
posted by RobotVoodooPower at 12:15 PM on March 27, 2019 [10 favorites]

Totter's Otterville, a local payground, has an automated, purpose-built, ball cleansing system. Balls would be pulled out of the pit on a conveyor, ran through the cleansing machine, then returned to the pit continuously. It was set up in full view, so it's a feature of the site.

...at least they did when my daughter was small enough to go there regularly. However, it's been like eight years.
posted by MrGuilt at 12:20 PM on March 27, 2019 [9 favorites]

I hear they have a big rat problem.

Or they did. Chuck E. Cheese was once a self-loathing rat with a short fuse. Then he was reborn in 2012 as a "hip, electric-guitar-playing rock star" mouse.

The joysticks are still greasy though.
posted by bassomatic at 12:39 PM on March 27, 2019 [6 favorites]

DashCon: Revenge of the Ball Pit
posted by Halloween Jack at 12:41 PM on March 27, 2019 [3 favorites]

>Balls would be pulled out of the pit on a conveyor, ran through the cleansing machine, then returned to the pit continuously.

If you're not doing the same thing with the kids, you're not addressing the root problem.
posted by Sing Or Swim at 12:43 PM on March 27, 2019 [20 favorites]

Chuck E. Cheese was once a self-loathing rat with a short fuse.

And there he is with a cigar in hand, right on the first page. #the1970s
posted by The Card Cheat at 12:44 PM on March 27, 2019 [5 favorites]

It does seem gross at first blush, but also: isn't sanitized = sanitized? If the machine is effective, everything that comes out of it will be sanitized.

Well, there was a bottle of something labeled "Sanitizer" hooked up to the machine, and the health department checked that it ran at a high enough temperature. But I can't imagine they'd have approved of this.
posted by thelonius at 12:47 PM on March 27, 2019 [4 favorites]

Metafilter: Randomly selected balls
posted by Greg_Ace at 12:49 PM on March 27, 2019 [2 favorites]

I've got this half-hearted idea to build myself a DIY Incubator and get a little USB microscope and do some culture samples from around my home. I've no biological training to speak of, but there's something fascinating about all those little blobs.
posted by endotoxin at 12:52 PM on March 27, 2019

Balls would be pulled out of the pit on a conveyor, ran through the cleansing machine, then returned to the pit continuously.

I'm helping out family with an elder care situation, so I'm really thinking hard about these kinds of solutions right now.
posted by RobotVoodooPower at 12:54 PM on March 27, 2019 [3 favorites]

If we dealt with the shocking child problem in ball pits, the germs would look after themselves.

If the ball pit were located inside a large autoclave, you could sterilize both the balls and children at the same time.
posted by mandolin conspiracy at 1:20 PM on March 27, 2019 [17 favorites]

Even new toothbrushes have bacteria on them. Let's not worry too much about the ball pits. Or McDonald's touchscreens. Or anything. Build up some immune defense and enjoy life.
posted by JoeZydeco at 1:37 PM on March 27, 2019 [4 favorites]

To paraphrase someone smarter than me:

“It’s ok to let your children play in the dirt ball-pit; just don’t let them with with raw chicken in the dirt ball-pit.

posted by Pirate-Bartender-Zombie-Monkey at 1:42 PM on March 27, 2019

Is nobody going to talk about the fact that they are not actually pits?
posted by srboisvert at 1:45 PM on March 27, 2019 [5 favorites]

...at least they did when my daughter was small enough to go there regularly. However, it's been like eight years.

I certainly hope they’ve washed their balls since then.
posted by Barack Spinoza at 2:15 PM on March 27, 2019

For those who think the headline is overly dramatic, wouldn’t bacteriophages be considered “killer germs”? I am sure ball pits are full of those, given the untreated sewage involved.
posted by TedW at 3:04 PM on March 27, 2019

One of the wildest raves I've ever been to was when someone managed to book one of those indoor kid's playgrounds for an all night rager. I have no idea how they got permission to do this, and I think it was maybe closing or something? I sure hope it was closing. If not, someone probably got in a lot of trouble.

It was probably a 400+ person party. The whole place was packed. In hindsight I'd guess that the actual legal capacity was just 200ish.

At one point the suspended ceiling was just raining sweat and it was all over the walls, floor and basically everything.

I remember going to play in the playground and ropes and ball pits and stuff and quickly learned to stay out of the ball pit because there were condoms and gross shit in there. I also ended up losing my fancy laser pointer in there and gave up even trying to dig for it.

Another time I was crawling around the tunnels with some friends and ended up finding the plastic tunnel nodes and joint sections just filled with sweat and who knows what. It permanently ruined a shirt and pair of baggy jeans.

All that being said I bet that still not the germiest ball pit out there. How about the one at Dashcon?
posted by loquacious at 4:04 PM on March 27, 2019 [9 favorites]

I mean, if it were adults in the ball pit, you could just treat them thoroughly, inside and out, with alcohol every 15 minutes or so....
posted by GenjiandProust at 4:07 PM on March 27, 2019 [1 favorite]

endotoxin "build myself a DIY Incubator and get a little USB microscope"

Eponyterrifying...

If you ever do pick this up as a hobby, buy at least a good quality pressure cooker to use as an autoclave. A real autoclave is preferable, but they start at a couple grand. Sometimes you can get second hand ones for cheap, but getting it inspected and certified is going to be a pain. Make sure it can do a "wet" cycle so you can prepare sterile media.

Also, bleach is your friend. Make up a fresh 1:9 bleach:water solution in a glass vessel (glass, jar). Anything that had come into contact with live microbes go in there for at least 10 minutes. Mix it up and make sure bleach touches every surface. For flaming your tools, isopropanol burns dirty and 95% ethanol can be hard to come by. Everclear will work. I picked up a butane-powered (it has it's own gas tank like a giant lighter) bunsen burner for $60. Best $60 I spent on lab equipment. If you can find 'flint glass pipettes' these are great for making loops and spreaders and other manipulation equipment - all you need is a small propane torch that can stand alone and produce a needlenosed flame. Don't forget the safety goggles. What Isopropanol is good for is filling spray bottles. Mist any suspected/ contaminated surfaces and let sit for a minute before wiping clean. Spraying your gloves routinely and dry-washing is a good habit of getting into.

For most environmental samples, you don't need an "incubator." Usually, incubators are for tamed lab E. coli or tamed yeasts. A good quality tupperware-type clear container with a lid (not too tight, should be easy to open) and an inverted carboard box that goes on top of it is hunky dory. Place a small glass of water in there. In case anything happens, wash everything down with 10% bleach solution - careful not to spread any spores that might have developed.

Classical microbiology is fascinating! There are good (ancient) guides that teach identification by growing them on different types of media and looking at morphology. Or gluing them on a glass slide (burning them on, actually) and seeing if they pick up/ exclude certain dyes.

Soil actinomycetes are particularly fun to cultivate - they tend not to be slimy and have a huge diversity in macro morphology and colouration.

'Settle Plates' can also be interesting; the weather will affect what will fall on, and grow, on your plates.

If you want to spend the money on it, 16S and 18S sequencing is the molecular method species identification. There are huge catalogues available to the public to look up what sequence you read from your little buddies. At a minimum you'd need a tabletop centrifuge that can make 14k gravities so you can make DNA preps. Oh, a couple of pipettors and tips - there are some amazingly cheap pipettors out of China that work good enough. You'd probably have to spend 10 or 20 bucks to buy some primers. You can mail your DNA sample + primer and get it done for like, $5 for each sample - less in bulk.

You'll learn what penicillium (sp.) looks like quick so you can save your time after you've found a dozen instances of different subspecies of it.

But never let your new friends overgrow. Sterilize them before they do. I was typing my settle plates (part of in-house QA/QC for a Plant Pest Containment 2 accredited facility) and they were mostly rated 0 or 1 for personal/ community hazard. I'd pick up a colony of 2 from the random outside, but we're close to a bunch of farms. Couple of times, though, one of my environmental specimens turned out to be a high risk level 3 hazard.

Feel free to memail if you're ever interested.
posted by porpoise at 6:48 PM on March 27, 2019 [20 favorites]

Hmm, I wonder if my parents took me there precisely to build up my immune system. 不干不净，吃了没病, right?

I'm trying to think of a ball pit designed to be easy to clean. You'd want to filter out large particles / lost laser pointers (maybe by shaking the pit?), flood it with hot bleachwater, rinse several times, shake off surface water, gently agitate until air dry...
posted by batter_my_heart at 9:48 PM on March 27, 2019 [2 favorites]

I mean, if it were adults in the ball pit, you could just treat them thoroughly, inside and out, with alcohol every 15 minutes or so....

You kid and/or sure why not let's try it - but this was in an era when alcohol at a rave was pretty much verboten and/or merely pointless.

It was a whole different thing from nightclubs then or now or the EDM fests of today. There wasn't anything even resembling a bar set up at this one, and at others from the same era you'd be more likely to find a smart drink or nootropics bar and often a nitrous oxide bar dispensing balloons.

I only rarely saw people at underground raves like this with any kind of alcohol. Occasionally you'd see someone drinking some 40s of malt liquor and smoking blunts or something, I mean those big pockets on JNCOs were basically built around a 40 oz beer bottle for a reason.

Most of my dance and dance music career in this era from about 1991 to about 2001 didn't revolve around any kind of alcohol at all and it was actually very rare to see anyone with it.

I still wonder what the heck happened after that night because unfortunately we kind of wrecked the place. It was an amazing night of music and dancing and partying, but in hindsight was probably a huge problem for some people if the place wasn't closing.

They would have likely had to replace all of the suspended ceiling tiles, refurb the bathrooms, replace any/all carpets and fabrics. I remember shuffling out with the last folks at or just after dawn and it was so sweaty, dirty and gross that the floor was... foamy. It wasn't just wet, but had standing sweat/water and drifts of foam deep enough to bury your shoes. I remember walking out through that foamy mess just everywhere and thinking about how the ceiling was raining... community sweat on me as I was dancing.
posted by loquacious at 10:11 PM on March 27, 2019

I actually wore the rat suit when I worked at C cheese in the 80's.
posted by boilermonster at 12:31 AM on March 28, 2019 [7 favorites]

MetaFilter: I actually wore the rat suit.
posted by loquacious at 12:48 AM on March 28, 2019 [3 favorites]

There was a summer whem my roommate was dating a manager at a local Giant Pizza Place indoor ball pit weird thing for kids and animatronic dancing s***. They had beer on tap. And we could buy a pitcher of Bud for six bucks. And she would give us free refills all afternoon. So we went there a lot. The one rule was you cant go in the ball pit, because it's for the kids. One afternoon we decided to break that rule. Turns out the 3 dudes overdressed in the corner were from corporate. And that's how I'm legally tresspassed from the regional equivalent of a Chuckee cheese.
posted by nestor_makhno at 3:36 AM on March 28, 2019 [2 favorites]

and thinking about how the ceiling was raining... community sweat on me

loquacious, you just unearthed a deep seated phobia I never knew I had.
posted by lydhre at 5:16 AM on March 28, 2019 [7 favorites]

Turns out the 3 dudes overdressed in the corner were from corporate

"Put. That pizza. DOWN."
posted by thelonius at 6:02 AM on March 28, 2019 [2 favorites]

MetaFilter: community weblog sweat
posted by a car full of lions at 6:03 AM on March 28, 2019 [2 favorites]

Charles Entertainment Cheese
posted by emirenic at 3:03 PM on March 28, 2019 [2 favorites]

Charles Entertainment Cheese Processed Dairy Food Product
posted by Greg_Ace at 3:22 PM on March 28, 2019

I remember going to play in the playground and ropes and ball pits and stuff and quickly learned to stay out of the ball pit because there were condoms and gross shit in there. I also ended up losing my fancy laser pointer in there and gave up even trying to dig for it.

At my kid's gymnastics gym, they periodically clean out the foam pit--a pit built into the floor with a bouncy bottom and filled with blocks of foam, that gymnasts land in when they are learning new skills or want to avoid the strain of repetitive landing on their feet and ankles. All the kids jump into the pit and throw the foam out, and then they collect all the socks, hair ties, water bottle caps, and other random flotsam that have ended up down there since the last time they fluffed it.
posted by Orlop at 10:20 AM on March 29, 2019 [1 favorite]