Is crumb rubber turf dangerous for kids?
Jun 2, 2015, 4:22 PM | Updated: Jun 3, 2015, 10:03 am
Parents with kids in the Edmonds School District are protesting a new synthetic turf sports playfield. Many of them, like April Osborne, worry about anecdotal evidence linking crumb rubber turf to cancer.
Osborne lets her kids play sports on the district’s other turf fields but she’s not happy about it.
“My oldest will have crumb rubber in his ears. You’ll get out the Q-tips and it gets in his eyes. He’ll cough it up. He’s got mucus and little black things coming up out of his lungs. He’ll blow his nose and chunks will come out,” she said.
Osborne said that’s why she joined parents and protested by Woodway High School this week. She said it’s simple.
“There are carcinogens in rubber tires,” she said. “Crumb rubber turf is made of tires. Carcinogens and kids don’t mix.”
But Edmonds School District spokesperson Debbie Joyce Jakala said it’s a done deal and she said a lot of families are anxiously awaiting the new turf playfields. There will be no cancelled games when it rains, among other benefits.
“When we finally, after ten years working with the City of Edmonds, could get to the point of having funding to do this stage of the project, they took very seriously the concerns raised,” Jakala said. “[They] held community meetings, held special study sessions, and at this point, there’s nothing saying it isn’t a safe product to use.”
Osborne is still worried. She points to a University of Washington Women’s Soccer coach, Amy Griffin, who received national attention after compiling anecdotal evidence linking turf playfields and cancer.
NBC profiled her last fall when she had a list of 38 college age or younger soccer players, nearly all of them goalkeepers, who had spent their childhood playing on the synthetic turf and then got blood-related cancer.
Today, Coach Griffin’s list is up to 126 soccer players with cancer.
Osborne also points to national environmental health experts like Dr. David Robert Brown. He knows about the study the district cites but believes it’s not adequate.
He said letting kids play on synthetic turf is inappropriate.
“There was no proof that asbestos caused cancer. There was no proof that smoking caused cancer and you can let it go on and do this experiment and you’ll get the proof, but you’re putting somebody else at risk,” Brown said. “If you want to do that, you have to tell them that’s what you’re doing.”
Tell the kids? Or just be sure you scrub them down like Osborne is doing, with soap and water, to get all the crumb rubber off her kids’ body after every game and practice.
She said what she really needs is proof that the turf is safe.
“It’s pieces of ground up tire — that’s what it is,” Osborne said. “So we could say, well, they’re not getting enough exposure or this or that, but nobody really knows.”
“I feel like we’re taking a chance with a generation of children,” she said. “Our kids — we take care and we say, ‘go play, have fun,’ and we kiss them on the head and send them on the field and they’re trusting that we’re not hurting them and I honestly don’t know that I’m not.”
For now, the turf in Edmonds is going in and Osborne will have to wait for health assessments and evidence-based research on crumb rubber turf.
