Title: Climate and the 'Turf Wars'

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Brian Lehrer: Brian Lehrer on WNYC. Now it's time for a health and Climate Tuesday section of the show. Today we have one topic that has potential implications for both on-the-ground health risks and the longer-term ones from climate change. When I say on-the-ground health risks, I mean it literally in this case because the topic is turf, the fields that so many kids and grown-up athletes are playing on now.

Why is this a climate story? Because there are important climate-related trade-offs with artificial turf versus well-maintained grass fields, and shorter-term health risks. Well, more and more, instead of grass, it is artificial turf. They are plastic blades over rubber pellets. One way to describe them that people are playing on plastic blades over rubber pellets, is that a health risk?

If you spend a lot of time in contact with all that, there are now about 18,000 turf fields across North America, is the statistic we've seen, with another 1,500 being added each year. The case for turf is that it saves money in the long run and holds up in all weather, but there are also some big disadvantages. Scientists point to chemicals in the rubber infill. Environmental groups raise concerns about microplastics and waste.

The heat on turf can get so extreme that it has been known on occasion to melt cleats. The science so far is inconclusive on a lot of the health-related aspects, but parents and schools and governments, and athletes themselves are weighing in and wrestling with the trade-offs. We'll talk about all this now with Michael J. Coren. He has a column at The Washington Post called Climate Coach. One of his recent articles or columns is headlined, "Why One Epidemiologist Won't Let His Kids Play on Artificial Turf Fields." Hey, Michael, welcome to WNYC.

Michael J. Coren: Thank you. Happy to be here.

Brian Lehrer: Listeners, we'll open up the phones right away on this one. Is this debate playing out where you live? Where do you come down on the issue of artificial turf versus grass? 212-433-WNYC. If you're an athlete, what feels better to you to play on? If you're a parent or a coach, do you have an opinion? If you're an epidemiologist like the guy in Michael's article, call in and help us report this story, or you can ask Washington Post climate coach, Michael Coren, a health and climate turf-related question of any kind. 212-433-WNYC, 212-433-9692, call or text. Michael, let's start with the basic. What's turf? I said plastic blades over rubber pellets. Say how accurate or inaccurate that is. What is that really?

Michael J. Coren: Sure, yes. It's not wrong, actually. That is some of the ingredients. You could think of it almost like a plastic layer cake. On the very base, you have gravel, asphalt, or concrete, and that's really the foundation. Then they put a shock-absorbing pad over that, and then they have what's called a backing layer. This layer basically holds those plastic blades upright.

It's usually made of polypropylene or polyethylene, or nylon, stuff you might even see in your clothes. Then you have what you described as rubber pellets. This is often called crumb rubber. Essentially, it's about 20,000 ground-up tires or more per field. It's just rubber that's been pelletized or turned into small pellets, and then it's dumped in between those blades. That's what gives it its soft kind of impact, or like soft impact-absorbing characteristics.

Brian Lehrer: We know, if nothing else, that those rubber pellets are making it into people's homes every time a kid rips off their shin guards or sweaty socks or baseball cleats and flings them everywhere, right?

Michael J. Coren: That's right. Yes, that's one of the less savory parts of it. The question is, really, we know there's some unsavory things in there, but are they getting into people's bodies? That's the question that scientists have been wrestling with for a while.

Brian Lehrer: If there are outstanding, unresolved, at very least, health issues here and climate issues, why has turf spread so widely in the United States? What problems is it supposed to solve in the first place?

Michael J. Coren: Right. Well, while it might be easy to keep a field going in certain climates, certain places with people who know what they're doing, a grass field isn't necessarily the sort of set-it-and-forget-it solution for a lot of places. If you're playing, let's say, a couple hundred or a thousand games a year, that's almost impossible for some places to maintain a grass field. What turf is allowing places to do is keep these fields open all the time, year-round, with, in theory, less maintenance and less money, and less, even, expertise. That isn't always the case, but that's certainly the pitch.

Brian Lehrer: In your story, you highlight Yale epidemiologist, tell me if I'm saying the name right, Vasilis Vasiliou, who says he won't let kids, his kids play on turf. What does his research show?

Michael J. Coren: He has kids and grandkids, and he didn't let his kids play on it. He really discourages his grandkids play on it. He got interested in this because he was, I think, at the World Cup, and he was going to watch some games, and he came out of the subway, I think it was on a really hot day, and he could just smell the tire rubber chemicals in the air during that experience.

He's an epidemiologist at the School of Public Health, and he started to basically research what was in the materials. You know what, basically, when you look into the actual chemical composition of tires, it's pretty unsavory. You end up with things from lead and phthalates, cadmium, benzene, nickel, sometimes arsenic, PFAS, or forever chemicals. These might be very small amounts, trace amounts in some cases, but they are known carcinogens, and they're also endocrine disruptors.

In the case of endocrine disruptors, which means it essentially affects how your body responds to hormones, it doesn't take very much. It can be a very tiny amount that actually matters. His study essentially looked at what was there. His follow-on study, which he hasn't been able to do, is to say, "Well, where does it end up, and what effect does it have on the body?" Those are called risk studies, risk assessments, versus what is: this is an exposure assessment.

Brian Lehrer: The turf industry, from what I read, probably points to studies showing no evidence of harm. Have you looked at those or know how reliable those are?

Michael J. Coren: Yes, I have. They're not wrong. The EPA has done some studies. Again, it was an exposure versus a risk assessment. What they found was that there are multiple exposures, ways that people can be exposed, so inhalation, just contact with their skin ingestion. If you ever go to a playground or some of these fields, little kids are eating this stuff. They basically found these chemicals.

They found that they were on the surface of people's bodies. They found that they were exposed to them at different levels, but they didn't find them in elevated levels in blood tests and other types of tests. So far, there's been very limited evidence that actually links synthetic turf to adverse health outcomes. Absence of evidence isn't evidence of absence necessarily.

That's what epidemiologists and scientists warn is "We don't know exactly what effects these have because children are very vulnerable." It matters when they're exposed. Then we have to follow them for a long period of time to say, "Hey, is this really a big deal? There have been other follow-on studies, and they've come to similar conclusions about the risk. The Mount Sinai School of Medicine, their position is that these are inconclusive studies, but there's significant gaps in the evidence, and they strongly discourage kids to play on them. Obviously, that's a minority opinion in many cases, but there's almost everything you want is out there.

Brian Lehrer: Yes, our lines are completely full with people who want to weigh in on this. Let's go to a couple of callers on these turf fields. We're going to start with one anti and one pro. Ann, in Maplewood, hang on, we're going to get to you second. We're going to start with Jonathan in Brooklyn. Jonathan, you're on WNYC. Hello.

Jonathan: Hi, Brian. I grew up in a rural area playing soccer on grass fields, and it was great. I moved to New York and started playing Pickup Soccer in McCarren Park on turf field, and it was incredibly hot. Setting aside the possible toxic nature of these fields to children, the injury risk has been proven on turf fields to be much higher, soft tissue injuries. I got my worst high ankle sprain of my life on that field. If we don't want professional athletes playing on turf, soccer, football, everything, why would we have our kids playing on those fields? That's my comment. Thank you.

Brian Lehrer: Thank you very much. Jonathan, with his experience at McCarren Park in Williamsburg. Well, he raises two issues there, and I wonder if you can answer either one. First, on the heat, why do the turf fields run so much hotter than asphalt? On the injury risk, never mind systemic health risks like breathing in plastic, whatever, and we do hear it in professional sports.

I know they say-- I don't know if they said this about Giancarlo Stanton and the Yankees this weekend, but they didn't play him in St. Louis in right field, where I think they have turf. I don't know if that's right, but I know that there's been in baseball where you can more easily hold out individual players than some of the other outdoor sports, "Oh, well, this guy, he has some knee problems, whatever. We don't like to play him on turf." Is there a greater injury risk for professional or amateur, or child athletes?

Michael J. Coren: Yes, certainly there's a perception of that among the players and the NFL Player Association, 90% of the members prefer to play on grass than turf. That's pretty common throughout professional sports. A lot of orthopedics and a lot of studies have shown that there are some risks for lower-extremity injuries with turf over grass. I think that it's a little bit nuanced, and depending on the sport and type of injury, but safe to say that that is a pretty widely held fear.

Brian Lehrer: It's a harder surface. It has less give, even though if you're looking at it from 1,000 feet, it looks like grass.

Michael J. Coren: Right. That can be true. Over time, the fields change, and then they have a test called GMAX. Basically, they test how how strong the impact is when you fall on it. A lot of these fields fail those tests over time because they compress. You may be able to keep a professional field up to the right standard, but a lot of these fields, over time, that are just managed by recreational parks and rec, don't meet those standards. In DC, they actually had to close a lot of those fields early because they didn't meet that, so that's definitely a risk.

Brian Lehrer: And the heat?

Michael J. Coren: Heat, absolutely correct. Grass just doesn't get that hot. The reason is that the grass blades, living grass blades, actually transpire water. They breathe, and they release water, and that cools them off. They don't get much above 100 degrees even on the hottest days. That is the opposite with turf. Essentially, you have a plastic material. It absorbs more of that heat. It doesn't actually release more of that heat. On a 94-degree day in DC, we took a thermal camera to these fields, and we were measuring 142 degrees. Safe levels are considered-

Brian Lehrer: Wow.

Michael J. Coren: -to be about 120, maybe a little less. Kids just can't cool off that fast. They're more vulnerable than adults. If an adult is feeling hot, your kid's really suffering, and it's dangerous if you don't give them enough breaks and water during those games. We've seen temperatures as high as 200.

Brian Lehrer: By the way, just for those of you who are following the Yankees closely and we're wondering why they kept their star, Stanton, out of the lineup this weekend, apparently, it was not for this reason. I just looked it up. The Cardinals' home field in St. Louis does have natural grass. All right, so there was that caller who didn't like playing on turf at McCarren Park. Here's Ann in Maplewood. You're on WNYC. Hi, Ann.

Ann: Hi. Thank you for taking my call. I appreciate it. I'll try to be as concise as possible because I could literally talk for hours on this. In Maplewood, we are having great debates about turfing a field near our high school. I just want to make the point that none of this happens in a vacuum, that I don't think there's anyone who would prefer a turf field over a grass field, all things being equal.

When you live in a metropolitan area and you are trying to provide space for kids to play, it becomes important to have fields that are usable. With respect to injury, I would also agree that if you had perfect grass fields versus a turf field, the injuries would be greater. I know from experience in Maplewood that because our fields are so ill-maintained that kids running over divots are breaking their legs, breaking their arms, so it isn't something that is just, like I said, a decision made in a vacuum.

You can't say, "Oh, we absolutely have to have a grass field." You're taking away the opportunity for kids to have a usable field to play on. What I'm saying, too, is that when there's bad rain, it could be sunny the next two days, and our fields are unplayable. At some point, that becomes a health issue to children as well. In my opinion, if you're not getting out to play, if fields are unusable, and you're not able to practice, you're not able to play, then what about kids being able to get out and use the fields?

Brian Lehrer: In your experience in Maplewood, just one follow-up question: are there some days, especially in a very hot summer like we've been having, where the turf fields are shut down because they exceed a certain temperature?

Ann: Not to my knowledge. We only have one turf field in Maplewood serving a tremendous amount of high school teams, club teams, and whatnot. I do not know that that has ever been shut down for heat.

Brian Lehrer: Ann, thank you. I get the two main points that you're raising there. Michael, interesting points. If you have a not-perfectly-maintained grass field, how many parks departments, maybe in Maplewood, which has some money, but maybe in a lot of parks departments, you can't perfectly maintain the grass fields, so they develop divots and everything.

Those could be injury risks of their own. She's right. I know she's right because I see it on the schedules of people I know who play sports, where, after it rains hard, the turf fields get reopened for use quicker than the grass fields. She raises two interesting points there anyway. Are they big parts of the debate?

Michael J. Coren: She's absolutely right. This is the central argument for many places, which is, it's a choice between playing and not playing, and getting the number of teams they want on the field when they want. It's hard to do with grass. It takes more expertise. It's more expensive to maintain on an annual basis, potentially. A lot of folks, 1,500 new turf fields a year, are making that decision to go to that.

I talked to Jeff Graydon, who ran Princeton's field facilities for 20 years or so, and he said, "Given the choice, I would have my kids play on a grass field, a well-maintained grass field," he actually said, which is the key point. He said those are few and far between. Not that it's impossible to do that, but most places aren't willing to invest in that, either the expertise or the money.

You end up with a lot of places-- I talked to Irvine, California, and they spent, I think, more than $4 million on two synthetic turf fields for exactly this reason. They play all day, or at least at night, especially. It's actually too hot during the day in many cases. Then they spent a lot more money to put in cork and engineered wood, I think, or sorry, coconut infill. Instead of tire rubber, they use coconut infill.

They used a water cooling system to cool the turf off, which doesn't solve, but at least eases the problem. There are somewhat expensive but actual engineering solutions to some of these problems. Yes, but she's absolutely right.

Brian Lehrer: The earlier caller was referring to McCarren Park in Brooklyn, coincidentally. I don't know if I would have noticed it if I didn't know we were doing this segment today. Over the weekend, I was walking past a New York City public park in the Bronx that had what looked like a very well-maintained baseball field, and I took a closer look, and the infield grass was turf.

I don't know that I would have noticed it, again, to say that again, if I wasn't thinking about this segment in the back of my mind. The infield grass was turf, but the outfield grass was grass. Is that kind of hybrid growing, to your knowledge?

Michael J. Coren: I brought this up with several people, and it has not become standard practice. Jeff Graydon did say that in many cases, it may make the most sense to have one turf that maybe receives the most playtime and maybe 3,000 hours a year instead of 1,200 hours a year, which is the max for those types of fields, and then the rest of them are grass, and you can alternate that way. I don't see that being like standard yet, but we may move to some hybrid systems.

Brian Lehrer: Interesting. Now, we label this the Health and Climate segment of the show, and we've been talking overwhelmingly about the health effects, like the exposure to the rubber pellets and the plastics, and injury risks. I want to touch on the climate aspect now by taking a call from somebody who happens to be calling in, who's a former guest on the show, Eric Goldstein, who works with NRDC, the Natural Resources Defense Council, who apparently co wrote an op-ed on this in The Daily News that he wants to talk about regarding New York City policy on this. Hi, Eric, thanks for calling in.

Eric Goldstein: Hi, Brian, love your show. Thanks for having me. As your guest has indicated, there are three major risks from this artificial turf usage. One is the heat. The other day, NRDC was out at East River Park, their new soccer field there. In a recent heat wave, we measured the temperature at 180 degrees. Nobody was on the field. Then you've got the second problem, exposure to toxics.

They vaporize lead, styrene, benzene, forever chemicals. They could be inhaled or absorbed. Then, as you've indicated, they're bad for the environment. Generally, the microplastics. There are tens of thousands of pounds of toxic plastics that are used for every single field. The microplastics fall off of these materials. They can, in a heavy rainstorm, run off into local waterways.

As you know, these microplastics have been found all around the world in human bodies and breast milk, and all. They are made from petrochemicals. The biggest supporters of these artificial turf fields are the plastics industry, the American Chemistry Council, and the plastic manufacturers. In fact, there's one plastic manufacturer who brought a lawsuit against physicians at Mount Sinai and other medical establishments just for trying to hold a conference to discuss the dangers of these things, and that's this [unintelligible 00:22:02]

Brian Lehrer: Is it that petrochemical industry production of these things, where the climate risk, as you see it, as opposed to the on-the-ground environmental exposure risk, comes in?

Eric Goldstein: Exactly right. We'll never solve the climate crisis if we continue to use and produce more and more plastics. As the recent study in The Lancet just the other week shows, plastics are expected to triple in production over the next 30 years. This is one growing and unnecessary source. The answer is really clear. Let's go back to grass. It's time-tested, it's safe, and it's cool. There's a City Council Bill, Intro 1202, introduced by Chris Marte, that would prohibit the Parks Department from installing new artificial turf fields. In most cases, that's the strategy that makes sense.

Brian Lehrer: Oh, it's interesting. That's a bill in City Council. Let me ask you one quick follow-up. I know you want to get to one more point, but the industry says turf has environmental advantages because A, it saves water, B, it cuts down on fertilizers, and C, it cuts down on pesticides. How does that claim stack up against the environmental downsides in your view?

Eric Goldstein: Well, what they are not telling everyone is that the turf itself has a life of 8 to 10 years. After that, you've got to deal with all of this toxic from rubber and other waste products and dispose of it somewhere. Plus, the microplastics come off of the blades of grass and the underpitting and run off into the waterways. Yes, there's a trade-off, but overall, no one can really argue that this is good for the environment.

Brian Lehrer: Eric, I'm going to leave it there. Thank you for chiming in on this from your post at NRDC. Last question, Michael. To his point that there's a bill in New York City Council to ban further development of turf fields, I see that some local governments, Washington, DC, for example, maybe Trump will take over the Parks Department and reverse it, I don't know, have already banned certain kinds of infill, like what they call crumb rubber. What kinds of policy debates or regulations are starting to emerge?

Michael J. Coren: We are seeing a lot of cities and jurisdictions either ban or restrict these, both for something you might call the precautionary principle. Europe does this, which is saying, "Prove it safe before you do it, not after." I think we're going to see more of that, and we're probably going to converge on a place where we get rid of some of the most risky chemicals, most risky substances, and they start to try to reduce the harm.

For example, microplastics are a big issue. They do find these in the waterways. Essentially, there's no effort to contain them from these fields as well. Some of those containment efforts can get rid of some of those problems, but right now, it's just basically Wild West. There isn't any design requirements, or I'm not sure there's even an effort to reduce them. There's probably some--

If you have plastic, it's going to escape. Until we move away from that, we're going to have environmental problems associated with it. There's so much that can be done just to minimize the damage from what is already occurring. The biggest problem, perhaps, is the actual fields themselves. If they last 10 years, and they don't always last, they have to be disposed of.

In the past, The Boston Globe found that there was a lot of these fields that were fraudulently dumped. I called up some places that supposedly recycled them. One of them told me that it was no longer cost-effective to ship them where they were shipping them to before, TenCate Grass, which is a joint partnership with ExxonMobil, I believe. They said they had recycled about 50 fields, but that was the same number they said they recycled in 2022.

There really hadn't been much progress there. It's only about 7% of all the fields that are coming off the landscape. It's a massive problem that has not been solved and is really being swept under the rug, so to speak.

Brian Lehrer: We have to leave it there for now with Michael J. Coren, climate coach columnist. Usually coach does not refer as literally as it does in this segment to like football coaches and soccer coaches, and baseball coaches. His column is called Climate Coach at The Washington Post. Thank you for joining us.

Michael J. Coren: Happy to. Thank you so much.

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