Dr. Erin Carr-Jordan, banned from entering the McDonald’s franchise near her home, details her horrific discoveries while visiting the insides of a random sampling of the nation’s indoor playgrounds located in McDonald’s, Burger King and other retail fast-food outlets, who use the playgrounds to attract children ages 2 – 12.

She explains why she started Kids Play Safe to conduct a nationwide survey and details the challenges she confronts in trying to gain legislative support to include the playgrounds on the nation’s health inspectors’ watch lists.

What started out as an innocent restroom stop at the local McDonald’s for an Arizona mother-of-four has turned into a national quest to expose the seamy side of those ubiquitous indoor playgrounds scattered across America. And what was uncovered by Dr. Erin Carr-Jordan while crawling through that PlayPlace of the world’s largest hamburger chain would haunt most parents.

Viewed as safe and fun places for kids to play while they have a burger or a pizza, millions of parents in the U.S. get a break from their toddlers as they crawl through brightly colored plastic tunnels, peer through cool-looking see-through plastic bubble windows, and traverse rope netting. The issue here for parents is not the view of the playground from the outside, but what’s lurking inside.

Small in height and stature, Carr-Jordan was able to get a kids-eye-view of the play area, as she wound through the tunnels with her children. She zeroed in on three separate issues that disturbed her: the filth, which included human feces, the disrepair, capable of causing physical injury and the graffiti, which ran the gamut from your standard expletives to violent gang markings and phrases, known as “gang slang.” Before leaving the restaurant, she felt compelled to apprise the manager and expected swift action.