Plastic playground slides create enough static to fry hearing implants!
The static can shut down the cochlear implant instantly. Cochlear implants were first introduced in the 1980s and have always had problems with static electricity.
In the beginning, they could be shut down by simply putting on a sweater. Now they are more stable, but they can still shut down with static from slides and balloons.
When the cochlear implant is shut down it costs $1,000 to be restored. It can also take days to get it done, leaving the child deaf for days.
A group is researching the amount of static produced by going down a slide and received a $25,000 Federal Grant. A company in Missouri that is developing anti-static coating for the Navy is seeing if their product will work on slides.
They believe that they could produce it for slides at an affordable price. Metal slides aren’t terribly helpful even though they don’t produce static, because they get too hot to slide down in warm weather.
