Does Your College Have Lead-Laden AstroTurf Fields?
May 22, 2008 · Print This Article
Hundreds of colleges and universities across the country have chosen AstroTurf as a low-maintenance, supposedly eco-friendly alternative to live grass. Athletes roll around on it every day, and no doubt fumes and microscopic particles are kicked up into the air during games and practice. Recently, it’s been found that there are disturbing amounts of lead in this bright green synthetic turf.
From Plenty Magazine:
Four New Jersey artificial playing fields have registered high levels of lead, the neurotoxic heavy metal, and the U.S.Consumer Product Safety Commission is investigating, according to the Washington Post . And not only that, but the recycled crumb rubber fill used as padding has been found to release toxic volatile organic compounds (VOC)s. These include styrene-butadiene, classified by the EPA as a probable human carcinogen, and whose inhalation can produce irritation of eyes, nose, throat and lungs. Another VOC in the fill, ethylene-propylene, is on EPA’s hazardous air pollutants list.
If your college has an AstroTurf field, it might be a good time to push for an alternative. Of course, you don’t want your school to tear up the fake stuff and replace it with grass they’re gonna pour pesticides and herbicides onto. Push for an organic lawn. If it can be done on golf courses, there’s no reason it can’t be done on your home team’s playing field. You can get more info at SafeLawns.org.
Link [Plenty Magazine] + [Safe Lawns]
Photo credit: Flickr user D. de la Peña
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This is particularly messed up. The whole idea of Astro-Turf is to stop from wasting all that water with real grass.
Sometimes it is like you can’t win. So, the lesson here I think is “don’t inhale” when playing outside.
@Alice, if you come over the my apartment we can inhale together…
K-Man, WTF? I mean, as far as you know I could have snake skin and rotten teeth. Of course, I am in actuality very hot, but there is no way for you to know that.
Is this really an issue? I mean, most of the time on a field you are standing or running, not putting your nose in it. Is every little bit of toxin a problem or does “what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger” apply in these cases also.
Alice, if you stick around long enough, you’ll learn that K-Man has his own special way with the ladies.
@James I played indoor soccer in Boulder, Colorado on a new artificial turf field. I played goalie, so I ended up down on the turf more than a field player, but even still we all ended up getting turf burn at one point or another (for me it was every game). I remember a lot of nights having to dig little black pellets of rubber out of a wound on my legs. I know college football players get the crap knocked out of them (and into the turf) and am having a hard time thinking of any field sport where competitors don’t come into contact with the ground with some part of the body, usually at a high rate of speed and pressure.
This is definitely an issue.
To say nothing of the potentially toxic rain run off and the danger of those little black pellets getting tracked off site by people’s shoes. The high school down the street replaced their grass field with an artificial surface and I saw a lot of that black rubber sand just lying around the sidewalk and on the street during construction.
I don’t think “what doesn”t kill you makes you stronger”, applies to nuerotoxins … Heavy metals & VOC’s can cause brain damage and life long symptoms— not the mention that over time it just builds up in your body, until..ehem, it does kill you.