Prioritizing Safety and the Environment: Rethinking the Impact of Artificial Turf

By Anna Zim­mer­mann | UConn Jour­nal­ism
May 2024

As an ath­lete, it is essen­tial to make sure you are tak­ing care of your body. You work tire­less­ly to ensure you are eat­ing healthy to fuel your body, con­di­tion well to be in the best shape, and weight train to pre­vent injury. So why is it, even though ath­letes have the utmost con­cern and care for their well-being, that the sur­face on which they play is not typ­i­cal­ly a part of that discussion?

The first arti­fi­cial grass instal­la­tion, first known as “Chem­grass” and now rebrand­ed as “Astro­turf,” was in 1964. It has since tak­en off, with over 16,000 turf fields in North Amer­i­ca as of 2023. While turf ini­tial­ly took off for its low main­te­nance cost and as a “sus­tain­able” way to reuse old tire scraps, there has been dis­cus­sion and con­tro­ver­sy in recent years about its health and envi­ron­men­tal impacts. 

There have been many health and safe­ty con­cerns raised in rela­tion to ath­letes play­ing on arti­fi­cial turf, such as Astro­turf. The Nation­al Library of Med­i­cine pub­lished a study, Health impacts of syn­thet­ic turf: Tox­i­c­i­ty stud­ies, chal­lenges, and future direc­tions. This study found chem­i­cals such as poly­cyclic aro­mat­ic hydro­car­bons (PAHs), phtha­lates, and per- and poly­flu­o­roalkyl sub­stances (PFAS). These chem­i­cals are known endocrine dis­rup­tors, car­cino­gens, muta­gens, and neu­ro­tox­i­cants. They took water that had been in arti­fi­cial turf that con­tained crumb rub­ber and inject­ed it into a chick­en egg and found that the chick­en egg had impaired devel­op­ment and endocrine dis­rup­tion. While this study shows a cor­re­la­tion between syn­thet­ic turf and devel­op­ment and endocrine issues, there has been min­i­mal research done con­cern­ing turf and human epidemiology. 

A study by the Cen­ters for Dis­ease Con­trol and Pre­ven­tion shows that ath­letes who play on syn­thet­ic turf fields are at an increased risk for methi­cillin-resis­tant Staphy­lo­coc­cus aureus (MRSA). While this is not because the turf har­bors the germs them­selves, it is due to what is known as “turf burn.” MRSA, caused by fre­quent cuts or abra­sions and skin-to-skin con­tact, can be passed through these abra­sive “turf burns,” as evi­dence shows that syn­thet­ic turf holds more bac­te­ria. The Cal­i­for­nia Office of Envi­ron­men­tal Health Haz­ard Assess­ment con­duct­ed a study that found arti­fi­cial turf caus­es dou­ble or even triple the skin abra­sions per play­er per hour com­pared to nat­ur­al grass, there­by increas­ing the like­li­hood of con­tract­ing or spread­ing infections.

In 2008, the CDC found that “arti­fi­cial turf made of nylon or nylon/polyethylene blend fibers con­tain lev­els of lead that pose a poten­tial pub­lic health con­cern” after test­ing an ath­let­ic field for con­t­a­m­i­na­tion. They found that new­er fields have a low­er risk of harm­ful expo­sure to lead; how­ev­er, as the field becomes weath­ered, the lead from the rub­ber is released, increas­ing expo­sure and pos­si­ble harm. 

Oth­er health and envi­ron­men­tal con­cerns are the intense sur­face-lev­el tem­per­a­tures on syn­thet­ic turf fields and the heat island effect. The heat island effect occurs when a cer­tain area is hot­ter than its sur­round­ing areas due to it absorb­ing and emit­ting more heat than oth­er nat­ur­al sur­faces. The rub­ber tire scrap infill in most arti­fi­cial turf absorbs heat, mak­ing the play­ing sur­face exceed­ing­ly hot­ter than the air or sur­round­ing sur­faces. I have per­son­al­ly had the expe­ri­ence of hav­ing these rub­ber turf parts melt to the bot­tom of my shoe due to the extreme sur­face temperatures. 

Nat­ur­al grass fields rarely reach tem­per­a­tures above 100ºF due to the water vapor cool­ing the sur­face. How­ev­er, accord­ing to Penn State Uni­ver­si­ty’s Cen­ter for Sports Sur­face Research, syn­thet­ic turf, depend­ing on the type of infill, max­i­mum tem­per­a­tures aver­aged 140º F to 170º F on hot, sun­ny days, with the hottest record­ed being 200º F. Par­tic­i­pat­ing in sport­ing events in these high tem­per­a­tures can cause heat induced injuries such as heat cramps, heat exhaus­tion, and heat stroke, mak­ing them dan­ger­ous for athletes.

Anoth­er con­cern is the migra­tion of microplas­tics con­tain­ing these harm­ful chem­i­cals into the envi­ron­men­tal and wildlife habi­tats through stormwa­ter runoff. The Con­necti­cut Depart­ment of Envi­ron­men­tal Pro­tec­tion con­duct­ed a study in which they iden­ti­fied numer­ous chem­i­cals in stormwa­ter runoff from these arti­fi­cial turf fields. They not­ed high lev­els of bar­i­um, cop­per, cad­mi­um, man­ganese, Zinc, and lead, with Zinc being par­tic­u­lar­ly tox­ic to aquat­ic life. 

Nat­ur­al grass has many crit­i­cal envi­ron­men­tal roles, such as act­ing as a nat­ur­al air con­di­tion­er, pro­vid­ing habi­tats to wildlife, help­ing break down organ­ic chem­i­cals, and improv­ing water and air qual­i­ty. The loss of green­space to arti­fi­cial turf not only direct­ly harms the envi­ron­ment through chem­i­cal runoff and con­tribut­ing to microplas­tic pol­lu­tion but also deprives the sur­round­ing envi­ron­ment of the ben­e­fits of its nat­ur­al alternative.

Cal­i­for­nia recent­ly signed Assem­bly Bill 1423, stat­ing that all turf fields con­tain­ing reg­u­lat­ed PFAS can­not be man­u­fac­tured, sold, or dis­trib­uted. If this Bill is passed, the law ban­ning these arti­fi­cial turf fields would go into effect on Jan­u­ary 1, 2026. Cal­i­for­ni­a’s inten­tion behind this Bill is to pro­tect young ath­letes from being exposed to PFAS and oth­er harm­ful chem­i­cals and to pro­tect their water sup­ply and environment. 

Con­necti­cut attempt­ed to fol­low suit by propos­ing a sim­i­lar bill in Jan­u­ary of 2023, An Act Pro­hibit­ing State and Munic­i­pal Con­tracts For The Pur­chase And Instal­la­tion Of Arti­fi­cial Turf Fields. The Bill, pro­posed by Con­necti­cut State Rep­re­sen­ta­tive David Michel, has since been tabled, with Michel say­ing, “There are no such efforts in this short ses­sion, unfor­tu­nate­ly,” when asked about the future of the Bill.

In Mass­a­chu­setts, the Burling­ton school board has enlist­ed a new pol­i­cy that requires the use of an infrared heat gun to deter­mine turf field sur­face tem­per­a­ture on hot days. These fields can­not be used if the air tem­per­a­ture is high­er than 85ºF and humid­i­ty is 60% or more. If the sur­face tem­per­a­ture is 120º F, ath­letes are per­mit­ted to play on the field with three water breaks per hour. 

Cur­rent­ly, no statewide efforts address this mat­ter in Con­necti­cut, but the issue is gain­ing more promi­nence from town to town. Through­out Con­necti­cut, there has been a lot of con­tention and con­tro­ver­sy sur­round­ing the pro­pos­als for new turf field instal­la­tions. Through­out the coun­try, states like Cal­i­for­nia are con­sid­er­ing these seri­ous health and envi­ron­men­tal fac­tors when decid­ing whether to install arti­fi­cial turf fields.

Alter­na­tives to syn­thet­ic turf have been sug­gest­ed, such as replac­ing the rub­ber tire scrap infill with plant mate­r­i­al such as coconut husks and cork or a non-tox­ic ther­mo­plas­tic mate­r­i­al. Return­ing to nat­ur­al grass would pos­i­tive­ly affect sur­round­ing envi­ron­ments and the over­all health of ath­letes com­pet­ing in these fields. While these solu­tions can be more cost­ly, the cost is small com­pared to the long-term and pos­si­bly irre­versible dam­age these arti­fi­cial turf fields are doing to the envi­ron­ment and peo­ple’s health. It is now up to the state rep­re­sen­ta­tives to decide what they tru­ly believe is a more com­pelling state interest.