The artificial turf fields using grounded up tires might have a link to cancer, but no one in the industry wants to do anything about it.
The United States is home to over 12,000 turf fields, a number that continues to grow by the year as high schools, colleges, professionals and even playgrounds turn to the technology to produce a low- maintenance field for children and adults alike to play on.
Most of these use grounded tires in the makeup of the field.
But now numbers and personal stories are starting to emerge about the possible dangers of these turf fields, including their link to causing cancer.
And yet no one in the industry or even the Environmental Protection agency wants to do anything about it.
“Let’s make lemonade out of this lemon. Let’s take this waste and turn it into a product,” Jeff Ruch, a lawyer with environmental advocacy group Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER) told ESPN in an E:60 report. “It was a solution to a solid waste problem that had a public-health blind spot.”
“The way we do things in this country, we for the most part operate on the principle that a chemical is innocent until proven guilty,” Ruch added. “It goes into the stream of commerce and only if it produces a body count is there then any sort of regulatory response. Despite promoting that practice, [the] EPA had never done a risk assessment.”
When athletes use the fields, especially children, the risk of taking in the chemicals in the tires is very high. This can happen either through ingestion, inhaling the chemicals or even through open cuts, all allowing the chemicals found in the tire to enter the human body.
It is such a large problem because kids literally grow up using these fields.
If their high school program has one (which is turning into the case), there’s four-to-six years spent playing on that field just through Modified, Junior Varsity and Varsity programs alone.
Continuing their sport through college adds another four years to that total.
The Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment (OEHHA) of the California Department of Health prepared a report on potential risks, including carcinogenesis, from the use of recycled tire materials on playgrounds.
A literature review of studies of the release of chemicals from recycled tires in laboratory settings and field studies found 49 chemicals, seven of which were carcinogens.
“When I was with the federal government, we would’ve called that an outbreak,” said David Brown, a toxicologist and former employee of the National Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to ESPN.
In 2015, Brown was part of a study aimed at determining the makeup of crumb rubber. In the 14 samples tested, 12 known carcinogens were found. Half of the 96 chemicals found were not government tested. The study also found irritants and PAHs (known carcinogens).
“I think they’re in the air you inhale,” Brown said of the chemicals in question. “The problem with soccer players is that they’re diving into the crumb rubber. I think they’re actually ingesting it.
Crumb rubber, Brown said, “came in the back door. And the back door was that we had tires we needed to get rid of and we wanted a process that would allow us to get rid of them. So we went to people who knew how to re-process things and create alternative uses for it and, because it was a federal project, people felt they were safe.
“But the people who evaluated the safety were not people who had done public health. It was engineers and guys interested in getting rid of waste tires,” Brown said.
“Young children have incomplete development systems and they tend to keep it in the body longer. The longer it’s in your body, the bigger the problem.”
The tires not only contain the chemicals used in creating them, but things like oil, and salt (especially in cold weather cities) could find their way into the tires used, which companies ground up and spread all over these fields.
Industry publication Scrap Tire News says there’s is currently no U.S. standard for processing crumb rubber, but that processors have adopted a “clean” standard that uses different machines to help remove contaminants.
Used tire disposal became a huge waste problem in the United States.
The Rubber Manufacturer Association’s 1990 Market Report on Scrap Tires in the U.S. stated, “Approximately 175 [million] to 205 million scrap tires are added to landfills or stockpiles each year. The existing inventory of scrap tires in stockpiles is estimated to exceed 2 billion tires.”
Tires do not readily decompose, among other environmental concerns, making it impossible to put them into landfills. So companies and environmentalists alike where left with a big issue; what the heck do we do with all these used tires?
No company has gone on record stating the dangers of the playing surface, all stating that there isn’t enough data to link cancer to the playing surface. The Environmental Protection Agency, you know the organization in place to protect public health instead of corporate interests, has also dodged the issue.
Without taking a look at the long-term impact, companies found that grounding tires up and using them for fields makes perfect sense.
So when is someone going to take a closer look?
When are these companies and public health agencies alike going to take an in-depth look at this issue, instead of protecting their bottom line?
I just hope it isn’t too late.
In 2014, former U.S. women’s national team goalkeeper and current University of Washington goalkeeper coach started compiling a list of athletes who played on the synthetic turf service and had been diagnosed with cancer. Then it was 38 players long.
Today, Griffin’s list of athletes with cancer has grown to 200 athletes, with that heartbreaking number growing by the month.
And until actual in-depth studies on long-term effects of the issue come out, companies just continue to point to a lack of data and continue about their business.
There are currently no studies done on the possible long-term effects of exposure of synthetic turf fields.
It is why the state of California is underway with a $2.9 million, three-year study performed by the California Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment (OEHHA) on synthetic fields.
It is the third study done on synthetic turf fields by the state. It is expected to conclude in June 2018.
In October, Sam Delson, deputy director for external and legislative affairs at OEHHA, told ESPN this new study differs from the past two California studies. “We acknowledge that there were data gaps [in the past two studies]. We focused on inhalation and chemicals in the air. We did not address the issue of absorption in that study.”
Delson, who echoed other estimates that crumb rubber can contain about 250 chemicals, went on to say, “Even though there have been at least three dozen studies already done by us and other entities, we want to look at a wider range of exposure, a wider range of fields and conditions, ages of fields, weather conditions and locations. And we want to look much more closely at ingestion.”
The turf industry says more than 50 studies have found these fields safe and/or cited “low levels of concern.” In April, Darren Gill, vice president of marketing for Field Turf, the biggest installer of synthetic turf in the United States, made a presentation to the Consumer Product Safety Commission. “We are 100 percent confident in what the available data tells us,” he said, “that anyone using our products should rest assured there are no valid health concerns tied to artificial turf.”
The Synthetic Turf Council, an industry group, says that the evidence collected so far by scientists and state and federal agencies proves that artificial turf is safe.
“We’ve got 14 studies on our website that says we can find no negative health effects,” Dr. Davis Lee, a Turf Council board member told NBC in a 2014 report. While those studies aren’t “absolutely conclusive,” he added, “There’s certainly a preponderance of evidence to this point that says, in fact, it is safe.”
Being completely safe and low levels of concern are not the same thing.
The fact that there is no conclusive evidence is appalling.
But why would an agency or companies with their own interests push for something that might ultimately lead to a ban on their product?
When are the government agencies in place like the EPA and Consumer Product Safety Commission going to step up and make certain that these fields are 100 percent safe?
It could be quite awhile, as they have remained almost silent on the subject. You can bet it won’t get done without a public push either.
Because it just isn’t good business, public health be damned.
