Mom Uncovers Filth, Fecal Bacteria, in Some Fast Food Restaurant Kiddie Play Areas

Aug. 15, 2011 — -- The play area at your local fast food restaurant may be harboring germs and bacteria that could make your children sick.

"Good Morning America" found out about this issue from a crusading mother who is trying to get standards in place for how – and how often – restaurant play areas should be cleaned.

At present, the government regulates restaurants and child care facilities, but not child play areas in restaurants.

Clumps of hair, rotting food and gang graffiti were just some of the things that mother Erin Carr-Jordan says she found when she followed her toddler into a fast-food restaurant play tube.

"It was like getting hit with a brick, it was so disgusting," she told "GMA." "There was filth everywhere, there was black on the walls and it was sticky and there was grime inside the connecting tubes."

A professional with a specialty in child development and four children of her own, Carr-Jordan couldn't get the filthy scene out of her mind, so she crawled into more play tubes. And when she felt restaurant managers weren't responsive to her complaints, she started taking her video camera with her, and then posting what she found.

"There is filth embedded. There's a layer of thick grime," she says in one of her YouTube postings. "Everywhere the children touch. There's just layers and layers and layers of dirt and grime and old food - everywhere you look. The walls are just covered in black filth. In the cracks there's filth. It's appalling."

Carr-Jordan knew the play areas looked awful, but she wanted proof they could make children sick. So she spent several thousand dollars of her own money on testing.

She collected samples at nine restaurants in seven states, from McDonald's, Burger King, Chuck E. Cheese's and others. She shipped off her swabs to a certified lab.

The results?

"We're not just talking about a little bit of dirt and germs - kids are supposed to get dirty, they're supposed to have fun, that's not what we're talking about here," she said of the findings.