What happened next surprised her.

Following her child into one of the slides, Carr-Jordan found this supposedly fun play tube had rotting food in every crevice, a used Bandaid inside, and gang signs and profanity scrawled all over.

“It was every little thing you wouldn’t want your child near,” said Carr-Jordan.

Outraged, she went back the next day to complain to the manager. She came back a third day to check to see if anything had been done — it hadn’t. Carr-Jordan continued to complain, six times to four different managers,  over the course of a month and finally called McDonald’s corporate headquarters. But, still, she got no satisfying answer.

So she took it upon herself to see if this was an isolated case. Visiting fast-food restaurants all over Arizona, her fears were confirmed — nearly all the play areas she looked at were cruddy and gummy with food residue. She swabbed structures, and sent the samples to a lab for testing.

Then, on a recent Midwest vacation, she visited as many cities as could, swabbing more fast-food restaurant play structures. In all, she took bacterial samples from restaurant play toys in Arizona, Colorado, New Mexico, Illinois, Wisconsin and Minnesota.

The lab test results were concerning. In every fast-food play area in every state she visited, there was at least one structure harboring an opportunistic pathogen — the kind that can sicken small children, who are apt to put their fingers, or every little thing they pick up, into their mouths.

“We’re talking about children, not adults who have stronger immune systems. They haven’t developed immunities to pathogens,” said Carr-Jordan.

Tests of Carr-Jordan’s swabs found strains of Bacillus cereus, fecal coliforms, Enterobacter, multiple strains of Staphylococcus, Acinetobacter lwoffii, and Acinetobacter baumannii, among others that can cause infection or illness, especially in individuals with weak immune systems.

Her findings provide another reminder to parents to make sure to wash their kids’ hands not only before they eat, but after they play at a fast-food restaurant.

For every playground where Carr-Jordan found an opportunistic pathogen, she filed a complaint with the local health department. She said the typical response was disappointing — while play structures must appear to be clean, their actual cleanliness is not under health department jurisdiction.

She also discovered that there are virtually no public hearth regulations at the state or federal level regarding sanitary conditions of fast-food restaurant play areas.

“It is a gaping hole, to me unconscionable, that there are no regulations with this,” she said.

Carr-Jordan says she has also received a cold shoulder from the fast-food chains themselves. “They are the king of re-direct … I’ve gotten a cookie-cutter response about everything.” 

“PlayPlace sanitation and cleanliness is a top priority for McDonald’s,” Danya Proud, a spokeswoman for McDonald’s USA, told this reporter. She added, “PlayPlace components should be cleaned daily to ensure that the PlayPlace is free from debris or spills that could pose a hazard.” She went on to say, “(We) pay special attention to handrails, stair treads, the slide entrance and exit, the inside of domes, entry portholes, and other areas that are touched frequently and become soiled quickly.”

Asked whether Carr-Jordan’s campaign has had any effect on the cleaning protocols of McDonald’s, Proud declined to comment.

Burger King also declined to address whether Carr-Jordan’s efforts have had any effect on their cleaning protocols, merely saying that the company has cleaning standards.

These standards include, “procedures for daily, weekly and monthly cleaning of playground equipment, pads and foams. On a quarterly basis, restaurant playgrounds are also required to be cleaned by a professional cleaning service,” according to Denise Wilson, the associate manager of global communications for Burger King Corporation.

Carr-Jordan said she found one fast-food restaurant that stood alone, both in its serious approach to sanitary play areas, and in its responsiveness to inquiries about its cleaning process: Chick-fil-A. She said Chick-fil-A. outlets sanitize nightly, disinfect bi-weekly, and use steam as a disinfectant.

Carr-Jordan acknowledges that her campaign for sanitary play equipment has so far produced only minor changes. In some instances, she noted, after a story about dirty fast-food play areas has been reported by local media, the franchises in those towns have hired professional cleaning companies to regularly clean and disinfect.

But at the corporate level, it’s unclear if any policy changes have taken place, she said.

Carr-Jordan isn’t done. She has reached out to lawmakers at the state and federal level, lobbying for regulations that mandate fast-food restaurants adopt good cleaning protocols following the Chick-fil-A model.

Meanwhile, her passion for change hasn’t wavered. “I really just want kids to be safe,” she said. 

Monday, the Seattle City Council passed new regulations that grant more freedom to mobile food vendors. Up until now, city sidewalk vendors could serve only hot dogs, popcorn and espresso. If they wanted a more varied menu, they had to get a permit and rent space on private property.  

The new rules approved by the City Council make it legal for street vendors to actually park on the street. Curbside trucks will pay $2.25 per hour for a four-hour time slot per week. They have to stay away from residential neighborhoods, high schools and keep at least 50 feet from restaurants. The Seattle rule that may continue to be most challenging is that food trucks must be parked within 200 feet of a restroom; employees must have access to a  restroom and if a vendor offers seating for customers, there must also be restroom access for patrons.

But Seattle’s mobile food sellers will have the opportunity to expand their menu options. The Seattle-King County Department of Health will use the same risk-based approach in approving food permits for curbside truck vendors and sidewalk carts as it already does for food trucks on private property. 

So what exactly is changing? Well, in the past if Seattle street-cart vendors wanted to offer pork chops, they simply couldn’t — it was against regulations. But now, under the new rules, they will be permitted to sell meat dishes if the meat is pre-cooked in a commissary kitchen — a health-department approved, licensed “mothership” — such as a commercial kitchen or the kitchen of an existing restaurant.

Other wheeled vendors, like those that serve pastries and ice cream, have to do their baking and preparation in the mothership as well.

One Seattle street food vendor, Ashley Penhollow, spoke very highly of the safety and preparation of the food served in her cart, a baked goods cart called “Street Treats.”  

“Everything is pre-made,” said Penhollow. “We don’t touch anything in here,” (referring to the baking process). Penhollow also vouched for the sanitation of mobile vehicles in general, saying, “We have everything a restaurant has — a kitchen, a sink, a refrigerator.”

King County Senior Health Investigator Phil Wyman says the constraints of some mobile vehicles can’t be overlooked, and do warrant some special considerations — such as prohibiting food carts from saving leftovers. “Because of the small size of food carts, all of these food handling processes are more complicated, so that’s why there are special safety rules in place for food carts,” Wyman said.  “Handling raw meat on a cart is one of those just too risky food handling issues, and therefore cannot be allowed.”

So if street-cart vendors want to sell hamburgers, for example, they have a few options. They can either cook raw patties back in their mothership kitchen or they can buy pre-cooked patties.

Specifically, this risk-based approach, as Wyman puts it, means “the code is more concerned with the handling of foods that are known to present a higher risk of foodborne illness, like meat. Cross contamination from raw meat to ready-to-eat food is one area of potential risk … Another issue is proper cooling of cooked foods; and a third area is safe holding of hot or cold foods.” 

Wyman, who is in charge of code enforcement, said vendors with “low risk” menu items, such as hot dogs and espresso, are inspected once a year.  Slightly higher-risk menu items like pre-packaged fresh meat and seafood, or ice cream require two inspections a year. A food truck offering the highest risk menu items, such as raw meat or seafood that require preparation in the “mothership” kitchen, would get three visits a year. The formula is simple: the higher the risk, the more inspections. The health department posts inspection results, for brick-and-mortar restaurants as well as for food carts and trucks, on its web page.

In Portland, with its bustling street food scene of more than 580 food carts, street vendors have a lot more opportunities than in most cities.  Portland allows curbside vending, but it also has many groups of carts or “pods” on private property. The website www.foodcartsportland.com does a nice job of documenting the phenomenon. In Portland, some food carts are allowed in parks and on the sidewalks. Some food carts even offer bicycle delivery.

Another big city, Chicago, is similar to Seattle with tightly controlled regulations — vendors can only serve pre-prepared foods on the street. Although new mayor Rahm Emanuel has said he wants to improve the city’s mobile food scene, the New York Times reported this week that any new rules will likely restrict food trucks from parking within 200 feet of restaurants.

Seattle’s move toward a more vibrant street food scene has been gradual and evolutionary.  Now that the City Council has moved forward to allow food trucks to occupy public property and sell from the street, it will be interesting to see if this is yet another way that Seattle resembles its Northwest counterpart, Portland.