A federal investigation is on its way to study the potential health risk artificial rubber turf used on synthetic fields can have on people. The federal study, approve by the Obama administration, seeks to find any connection between the exposure to recycled tire materials in sports fields and cancer.
According to Reuters, three federal agencies will be responsible for the study, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC), the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), and the Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC).
The study is necessary to protect kids and young athletes
The study will focus on the crumb rubber turf and the negative effects it may produce on people exposed to it for long periods of time. The rubber crumbs are usually encountered in any synthetic fields across the U.S. It’s also spread on playing fields, allowing better traction and cushion for playing sports. Soccer players, football players and anybody who plays sports on artificial fields is exposed to this material often enough to make them vulnerable.
According to EPA spokesperson Laura Allen, the study will include a technical team of almost 50 federal employees as well as a $2 million budget. As this rubber crumb turf is commonly used nationwide in fields and playing areas for kids, it’s important to determine whether this material is harmful to people or not.
Lead is dangerous for the blood
Lead levels high enough to potentially harm children have been found in artificial turf used at thousands of schools, playgrounds, and day-care centers across the country, USA Today reported in March of last year.
Although the link between crumb rubber turf and cancer has not been found yet, there’s a case worthy of attention. In 2015, a soccer coach from the University of Washington released a list of young athletes who played on artificial turf fields and were recently diagnosed with cancer. The soccer coach stated that 38 American soccer players had been diagnosed with the disease.
The list contains 38 young athletes of which 34 are goalkeepers, which are the players that spend most of the time on the ground. According to a publication by Forbes Magazine, blood cancers like lymphoma and leukemia lead the list of cancer diagnosed patients.
Athletes exposed to artificial turf have been diagnosed with cancer
The list of athletes diagnosed with cancer includes more than 200 people nationwide, soccer being the most popular sport in the matter. The surface on turf fields, although it provides traction and cushion for players, it also gets crumb rubber turf into player’s mouths, ears, and clothing.
The study aims to determine what chemicals are in crumb rubber and how people can be exposed to them. Still, people will have to wait until the further research is done by the federal agencies to know the risks of playing in synthetic fields.
Source: Forbes
They tested car tires before and they passed. I suspect mobile home tires occasionally get in the mix for the turf, and they are made with other materials (they generally only last a couple thousand miles). They need to check those materials. They are 8-14.5 and 7-14.5 tires and are also used on a variety of other trailers mostly secondhand from the mobile homes. My dad worked with them for decades and died of leukemia. There were also some Chinese ones that appeared a couple decades ago, they smell odd. There is no history of cancer in my family or his at all…all heart disease and stroke.
” Chinese ones that appeared a couple decades ago, they smell odd”
China dumps an enormous amount of cr-p on the US …
because we asked for it, via Bill Clinton, GW and the China trade pacts.
Oh stop with the cancer scares already. Pretty soon pissing in muddy water will lead to cancer. People are exposed to something in the air, water, home, garden, car, phone and etc, etc. In order to escape anything that would harm us we would have to be placed in a bubble at birth and never go anywhere or do anything, Even then you would tell us that the bubble that we spent our whole lives in gave us cancer. How about this for a headline. “Researchers at such and such laboratories have singled out the means to destroy all cancerous cells” . You may now go out and live your lives without us finding a new element that will give it to you. No more rainbow colors for this disease. Now we can begin to eradicate something else.
Fact is many people die of cancer…some of us would prefer to live longer instead. This is not about some food additive that was fed to rats at very high dosage, these are kids dying, using a product they way it was intended.
Of course, the Prop 65 warnings in California have become meaningless. Every manufacturer of anything puts a warning on their product even if they have no reason to think there is any carcinogen, just to insure they are never sued. So everything that is genuinely bad is easily camouflaged. 2x4s now carry a warning. Get real, it is just a piece of wood. But you think your faucet is brass (zinc and copper)? Well, they put lead in that brass so their tools that make the faucet will last a little bit longer, and that put lead in your water. But you look at the faucet and think, just another BS warning. Same with keys…lead in the brass. Don’t let your infant/toddler suck on those things.