Last week, an 18-month-old in Queensland suffered second-degree burns to the bottom of her feet while playing at a park in Ipswich.
Astroturf can hit temperatures of almost 90 degrees Celsius during summer, and high temperature makes the soft rubber covering children's playgrounds reach more than 80 degrees.
Dr. Pfautsch a senior research fellow at Western Sydney University says young children in childcare centers do not know how to react to the heat and often stand on surfaces for longer than the three-second burning threshold.