Uggh ... says the parent who just turned a freshly laundered soccer sock right side out and dumped about a tablespoon full of turf balls out on the table in the process.
Field turf was originally invented by a guy named Gilman. He was the brother of Sid Gilman who you might remember him as the coach of the then AFL San Diego chargers. He was pushing his product on the old soccer coaches list. Since I am an old man I always hate new products. I though nothing wrong with playing on grass even thought it is expensive to keep up. He just put in a field at Met Oval in Queens. Kind of liked it and was going to put it in at my home field. I had 250 thousand to spend. Then I found out it was more expensive to buy and install so I passed on it. That was the original field turf. Then Nike bought the company. They changed the process. Then a lot of other start up companies made knock off field turf fields. They looked the same and were cheaper they were also inferior and had things that were poisonous. I found out that the park I grew up in had went to field turf knockoff. High amounts of lead and other things. So the park was closed until they removed that crap. You can buy artificial grass for the lawn around your house. Sounded good no more mowing fantastic. I would be careful when buying this stuff. Maybe the government should try and stick their noses in this to try and Mae it safe for kids to play on.
I'm a bit skeptical. Story has no science in it, just coincidence (at this point). I would assume that there should be an equally coincidental list of football players, who also spend a lot of time on the ground on field turf having the same problems. That said, I would also like to know the conditions that the majority of the effected trained on the turf. Was it during the heat of the day (in wamr/hot environments) when the undersurface heats up and potentially gives off fumes. Or was a lot of time spent in indoor facilities where air doesn't circulate.
I am in NJ. home of several child cancer cluster. I live near Ciba, probably the largest and most famous in NJ. I know a few older fields failed that 2008 study and were supposedly closed for clean-up. Considering how populated we are per sq mile and that my keeper daughter who has played at a high level and knows a lot of high level players (who naturally spend more time playing), I would think I would know one keeper that has cancer. I don't know of any. Considering that football connection since they prob spend as much time or more lying in the turf, I do know one pop warner football player that died 2 years ago from a brain tumor. Coincidence? who knows. All our youth football plays only on turf and a large percentage of soccer as well.
Other Left Coast UPDATE California enacting legislation .... Bill calls for the Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment to study crumb rubber http://www.paloaltoonline.com/news/...l-targets-synthetic-turf-including-palo-altos http://www.kcet.org/news/agenda/health/is-crumb-rubber-safe-bill-seeks-to-answer-that-troubling-question.html Sensible
We were made aware of this by our son's keeper trainer about a year back. He pushed for the club to move the keeper training over to one of the grass fields. Given that the keepers train 3x a week for 2 hours each session it was felt not to be worth any potential risk. The clubs lawyer apparently thought so too!
_________------------- ---------------[[[[[[[[[[[[[[ THIS CAR FOR SALE ===== After looking up a journalistic author of a report I wrote with thanks and encouragement and asked he keep up on who's doing what from that research angle. Open to ideas about what else we do as concerned soccer parents to find out how bad this stuff is....... Thanking reporters is all I got.
http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/2015/03/15/artificial-turf-health-safety-studies/24727111/ Article in USA today about this topic. Does anyone know how many lbs of rubber crumb is put down on a typical turf field? How often does that rubber crumb need to be replenished etc?
On keepers I agree with philly. The training is where your always moving and on the ground go to a grass field to train. In actual games it is probably safe to play on those field. Game you just have to worry about other players more then the field surface.