CPSC Says Synthetic Fields Safe on Lead Issue

Awhile back we did a post on the decision by some New Jersey schools to shut down synthetic turf playing fields due to findings of elevated lead levels.

At the time, the Consumer Product Safety Commission was launching an investigation into the safety of those fields. The CPSC has completed its evaluation and concluded that the fields are safe for children to play on.

Just a brief review: the lead issue affects only a very small percentage of synthetic turf fields. They are generally older fields, where a manufacturer used lead pigments to make the synthetic blades of grass appear green. The pigments are incorporated into the synthetic fibers and don't readily come out.

After reviewing the situation, the CPSC concluded that the lead does not leach out of the fibers, although it is conceivable that a child could ingest lead if he/she were to eat some of the grass fibers, or fragments of them. The CPSC recommends that children wash their hands after playing on such fields, but even that is a pretty conservative precaution--children are not going to voluntarily ingest grass fibers from these fields (in contrast to chipping lead paint, which younger children will eat).

For the CPSC press release, click here. For the evaluation report, click here.

Sorting Out The Health Claims Over Synthetic Turf Fields

A decision by New Jersey health officials to close two synthetic turf fields over concerns of high lead levels has sparked a spate of news coverage raising fears about the safety of these increasingly popular sports venues.

For example, today's Washington Post has a story (Metro section p.4) on the potential hazard: "U.S. Investigates Artificial Turf's Lead Levels." The other night ABC News ran a more inflammatory piece typical of television news coverage, featuring a couple of activists who make it sound like artificial turf fields are nothing more than toxic waste dumps.

The Curmudgeon has some familiarity with these issues. As a member of the Board of Directors of the Arlington Soccer Association, which plays many games on artificial turf fields, he has looked into the issue. (The photo here is of the beautiful synthetic field at Washington-Lee High School in Arlington.)

Here's some reassuring news: the likelihood of any significant health hazard from articifial turf fields is quite low. That's not to say the risks shouldn't be investigated and quantified. But you certainly shouldn't worry too much if your children are playing on one of these fields.

Synthetic turf fields are becoming increasingly popular, especially in densely populated urban areas. The reasons are pretty obvious. Today's artificial turf is far more user-friendly than the old "astro-turf"--it's softer and less abrasive. Arlington recreation officials tell us that a typical lighted synthetic field in the County will get five times the usage of a "grass" field. We put grass in quotation marks for a reason: most grass fields quickly turn into dirt fields, with a few uneven clumps of grass, due to overuse.

One reason you get more usage from a synthetic field is that it doesn't have to be closed when it rains or when the field is wet. A week ago, after just one day of moderately heavy rain, Arlington's grass fields were closed for four days because they were wet and thus subject to damage if used. Another reason for more usage is year-round use. Grass fields typically need to be covered and off-limits in the winter. Also, synthetic fields don't need to be taken out of use for rehabilitation and rest every three of four years. Even after taking precautions to limit damage to grass fields, most still get destroyed by overuse.

In a dense urban area like Arlington, where land is at a premium, being able to quintuple the use of a given area by installing artificial turf makes the decision a practical no-brainer. The fields are expensive--between $500,000-$1 million, depending on the infrastructure needs at a given site--but over the long term they are less expensive given the greater use and lower maintenance. That's why Arlington, which has already installed seven synthetic fields, is busily planning three more, and we hope, more after that.

So, barring some serious health issue, artificial turf fields are here to stay and you'll see many more of them in the years to come. The current estimate is that there are 3500 in the U.S. today, a number that could easily double in just a few years.

What of the health issues? First off, you need to understand that grass fields have health issues too. It is true than nothing, including synthetic turf, beats playing on a well-maintained grass field. But few grass fields are in such condition, nor can they be kept in such condition unless play on them is severely constrained. Most are rutted, uneven, lumpy, bumpy surfaces, often with low spots that accumulate water and leave muddy areas days after the last rain. Running and playing on such a surface significantly raises the potential for many injuries.

Also, while people like to think of grass fields as some kind of organic commutation with nature, there's nothing natural about most grass fields. To grow grass in an urban environment requires chemicals--fertilizers, weed killers, insecticides. (It also requires a lot of fresh water.)

In the Washington Post story today, one New York lady who is on a mission against synthetic fields complained: "If I put a piece of synthetic turf on your desk, then I take it away, these pieces of recycled tires will be sitting on your desk. The question is, how does that pose a health risk to young children? Kids are bringing this into their homes. It's on their sneakers."

That's nice, but the same thing happens on a grass field. Kids bring home the chemicals used to treat the fields on their sneakers--and their clothes, their skin, their hair, etc. The difference is that you can't even see these chemicals and you generally don't know how much is there or when the chemicals were applied. (Kids also bring home mud, sand and grass clippings from such fields, which any soccer dad knows will have to be cleaned up if not intercepted at the front door.)

So in a sense this debate is little like the surreal debate surrounding nuclear power. Activists get all up in arms about nuclear power, with its fairly limited risks, while ignoring the enormous health and environmental damage done by a similarly sized coal-powered plant. For some reason coal and grass are "safe" simply because they are familiar.

As for synthetic turf fields, the primary worry has been with the ground up recycled tires that provide the "fill" for the green plastic fibers that make up the field. These black particles essentially take the place of dirt. They perform an environmental service as well, by providing a nifty use for old tires that otherwise would have to be difficult to dispose of.

The rubber in tires, however, is not exactly free of chemicals. There's no question that if you were to burn the tires, the fumes would be fairly toxic. Some researchers have raised an issue as to whether simply heating the black tire particles in a synthetic field can also release toxic fumes. One disadvantage of such a field is that on a hot, sunny day, it will get quite warm at the field surface. To date, however, no one has shown that at the temperatures occurring on even the hottest day, any concentration of fumes from tire rubber on an artificial field would accumulate and be inhaled by players.

(In one laboratory experiment, researchers found some potentially toxic fumes when heating tire rubber in an enclosed environment, but the test was far from any real-life situation. You could just as easily use the results to argue that children should not be allowed to play near any high-speed roadway on a hot day, which could keep kids off many grass fields too.)

Another concern was that players on synthetic fields could more easily get staph infections because the fibers on the fields can cause a minor burn-like scrape if slid upon, and the plastic allegedly harbors the staph bacteria more readily than grass. Suffice it to say that this theory has not been proven at all.

The latest concern is about lead. The frustrating thing about reading and viewing news articles on the issue is that they are long on nifty opposing quotes from activists on both sides and short on facts. We still can't tell from these stories whether the lead issue is associated with the tire particles or the plastic fibers, or both. For example, today's WaPo story focused on the tire particles, but a WaPo online story yesterday (from the Associated Press) strongly suggested that the lead issue is associated with the fake grass fibers, and may apply only to older fields made of nylon fibers as opposed to polyethylene. See "Feds Are Looking Into The Dangers of Lead In Artificial Turf."

[Yesteday's story sounded more authoritative. It pointed to the use of pigment containing lead chromate, used to make the field look green, in nylon fibers used by the manufacturer of Astroturf, and noted that 10 other NJ fields, made of polyethylene fibers, had tested negative for lead.]

Let's say, however, that there is at least a potential for some lead exposure from the tire particles. No need to panic. Lead is a known toxin if ingested. Hence, living in a home with lead paint is not much of a hazard in and of itself, but it can be a hazard if young children eat chips of lead paint or inhale lead fumes when the paint is sanded or blasted.

On a playing field, the issue would be whether the tire particles (or plastic grass) emit lead, and if so where it is. If it's just on the playing surface, it's not likely to be inhaled or ingested, and it will periodically be washed (or blown) away so that it won't accumulate. If' it is in dust that comes up above the field, then we need to know whether it is above background levels of lead, and whether it is at a level that is hazardous. Very few people spend a lot of time on artificial turf fields, so it is not like lead in a workplace with someone being exposed eight hours a day, five days a week.

For lead to be toxic, one needs to have a fairly significant exposure. Indeed, we all have lead in our bodies and get exposed to a certain amount of background lead. So a slight elevation in lead on a playing field that someone is on a couple times a week for a couple of hours is not going to be particularly hazardous. (Although we'd agree that hazard should be abated, within reason.)

The bottom line is that synthetic turf fields, like grass fields, probably have some hazards associated with them. Those risks are pretty small, however, and not unreasonable. And they may be more easily managed than those associated with grass fields. Our advice is not to worry. Let little Johnny (or Susie, or Omar, or Ivan or LaToya) play on that nice green, level artificial turf field, and let him/her have fun!

UPDATE: We learned one "hazard" of synthetic fields this afternoon: you may just find yourself spectating at a game played in a torrential downpour, whereas you'd be snugly at home with the game cancelled if it was on a grass field!

Grass v. Artificial Turf--Which Is More Toxic?

In our capacity with helping manage youth soccer programs in Arlington, we were today referred to an article in the Charlottesville Daily Progress on potential toxic dangers of artificial turf playing fields: "Synthetic turf: Saving grace or harmful place? Health risks could come along with new fields."

The story cites "concerns" about the potential toxicity of the infill used for synthetic fields, which is made from ground up tires. It also suggests that cuts and scrapes from artificial turf fields can cause a greater danger of staph infection.

So we spent some time looking into this since Arlington has a number of synthetic turf fields, with more in the works. What we found was scant evidence of any significant risk for artificial turf fields, especially when compared to the risks of plain old grass fields.

Let's start with your basic, familiar grass field. (Or, in Arlington--and to be fair, most urban jurisdictions--grass and a lot of bare patches of dirt.) Growing grass requires chemicals. Fertilizer, herbicide, sometimes pesticides. These are potent chemicals that include numerous carcinogens, and they are applied directly to fields on which children will be playing extensively. Yet, when a local parks authority suggests building a new park, or replacing the grass on an existing field, no one goes up in arms about the danger to kids.

There are other dangers, of the more mundane kind--falling on uneven surfaces, getting scraped on the dirt and rocks, etc. A number of studies have shown that turf fields also produce fewer contact injuries and longterm injuries--in part because they present a level, even surface.

So what about synthetic turf?

The primary focus of the Daily Progress story is on a report prepared by an outfit in Connecticut called Environment And Human Health, Inc. We don't learn much about EHHI--where it gets its funding, who its scientists are, etc.

We went to EHHI's website to get the report. It claims that EHHI did some testing that showed the release, when heated, of four potentially hazardous chemicals from the tire infill in synthetic playing fields. But EHHI's report gives no details on that testing--doesn't give us even a clue to the testing protocol.

What we can be pretty sure of is this: that the laboratory testing done by EHHI bore little relationship to the real world conditions in which players are exposed to the fields. We suspect that EHHI took a bunch of shredded tire particles, heated them in an ENCLOSED laboratory apparatus, and then measured the chemicals released. One would hope that EHHI did a study in which it analyzed the chemicals in air, but the report refers to releases under "aqueous ambient temperatures," which means in a water solution.

That's not at all real world. Most of these playing fields are in the open air, where any chemicals released most likely would be quickly dispersed. Moreover, those same chemicals are emitted from tires on highways, and so are already in the air.

A really good study would be to conduct on-site tests at both a synthetic field and a grass field that are near enough to each other to have similar ambient air. The tests would measure the actual air over the field at various times of day, on both fields, as well as in areas away from the fields (to control for the natural "background" amount of chemicals in the air). Such tests are more difficult than those in a laboratory, but they can be done. We suspect you'd find no difference in the air at either field, or you might even find more nasty chemicals over the grass field.

Most of what EHHI has done is to review literature on potential toxicity of ground up tires. But you cannot compare the conditions in a shop that recycles tires with those on a playing field with tire pellets lying in fake green grass. And, in any such study, the key element is the DOSE of the chemical in question.

We were particularly surprised at one claim in the EHHI report, which was that emissions of one of the chemicals of interest would amount to "four to six grams"per square foot of field "on a hot day," i.e., when the surface temperature on the field approaches 140 degrees fahrenheit (which can happen, but not too often). The typical measure of exposure for any toxicological assessment of inhalation risk would be in a unit per cubic meter of air. Putting it in terms of grams is completely meaningless.

Buried in the EHHI report is the concession that "[a]ctual exposure measurements are needed to determine the potential inhalation risks for players on the field or for spectators and nearby residents." Without those measurements, the rest of the report is really not worth the paper its printed on.

In the end, all this amounts to is alarmist science, rather than good science. The report is almost entirely conjecture. It's funny--the authors are quick to dismiss a number of studies that found no problems with synthetic turf, on the ground that such studies inadequately assessed the risks, but they don't apply those same standards to their own work.

Now quickly, what about the claim that synthetic fields pose a higher risk of staph infections? It appears to be based on one study, again in grass-happy Connecticut, after a staph outbreak in a college team. As best we could tell, the study does not show any increased risk of staph on synthetic fields compared to grass fields--to show that, you'd need to follow similar teams playing exclusively on each type of field for a period of time (not that difficult of a study, actually) and then see if either group had more infections. Until that's done, we don't really know.

Some additional research may be warranted--it would be nice to know exactly what the risks are, and be able to compare them to similar risks from grass. But that will require much better science.

In the meantime, we see no reason to worry about kids playing on synthetic turf fields. And this weekend, when our grass fields are likely to be closed due to the much needed rain we're getting, we'll be glad to be playing on those all-weather artificial fields!