We’ve all played in a bounce house before, maybe even as an adult. These bouncy air-filled enclosures are certainly fun, but they pose a risk that many people don’t realize. We’ve heard stories of them collapsing on children and blowing away in the wind, but there’s something much more sinister that can lurk inside the brightly colored play equipment.

Brenda Sanderson and her family were celebrating a graduation with family and friends. Plenty of people had come to celebrate the occasion and a bounce house had been set up for the kids to play on. Sanderson’s two sons took advantage of the opportunity and spent plenty of time burning off their energy inside the house and sliding down the attached slide.

It wasn’t until a couple days later that Sanderson noticed something strange on her son’s arm. She saw strange marks that appeared to be some sort of friction burn. She asked her son where the marks came from and he told her he thought they came from playing on the slide. She agreed and pushed the sores to the back of her mind.

A few more days later and the sores, instead of getting better, had begun to spread across her 10-year-old son’s body. Sanderson decided it was time to take her son to the doctor just to be sure. What the doctor told them shocked them. The sores were caused by a staph infection that is common in bounce houses and other equipment that doesn’t get cleaned properly.

While it is the responsibility of the owners of the equipment to keep it clean, and the state mandates such cleaning; the practice doesn’t always get done. Experts recommend checking the inflatables when you set them up to see if they are clean, and if they don’t meet your standards, demand the company to come and clean them or get a refund.

The plastic that is used in bounce houses is similar to the plastic used on wrestling mats and other gym equipment and bacteria can easily stick to the surface to be spread on to other people that come in contact with it. Just one open cut or wound can make someone susceptible to picking up the nasty infection.