Is your child’s playing field contaminated with toxic chemicals?
With spring just around the corner, kids everywhere are eager to get outside and play.
And after the winter we’ve had, it’s about time.
But a lot of them will be running, jumping and sliding into dozens of toxic chemicals — including ones that can cause cancer.
It’s all because of a recycling plan that cities and towns embraced before thinking through what the consequences might be.
And now people have begun to realize that these “earth friendly” playgrounds and athletic fields could be making their kids sick — and even killing them.
And kids who play on them get these old tire pieces in their hair, clothing and even their mouths.
Kids like soccer player Austen Everett, who started playing on crumb rubber when she was in sixth grade. She spent hours every day practicing her goal-keeping skills on fields filled with those tiny black rubber dots.
By 2008, Austen had even made the University of Miami soccer team. And that’s when a diagnosis of non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma cut her dreams — and her life — short.
University of Washington soccer coach Amy Griffin has collected the names of close to 200 young athletes who developed cancer after years competing on crumb rubber turf fields — and the list seems to grow every year.
Griffin has been coaching for three decades and said she can’t remember a single case of cancer during the first half of her career. But now there’s a “stream of kids” coming down with the disease.
And it’s not hard to see why.
Grinding up tires to make athletic fields and playgrounds may seem like an earth-friendly idea. But the fact that tires are made with toxic chemicals like mercury, lead, benzene and arsenic, all linked to cancer, seems not to have occurred to those who came up with it.
And while the industry would like you to believe that these poisons stay safely trapped inside the rubber — even when it’s pulverized — unbelievably, there haven’t been any safety studies.
But now, with parents, coaches and even politicians demanding answers, the feds have finally announced that a study will be done and a report issued by the end of the year.
Are you kidding me? Another full year for children and teens to be rolling around in these toxic chemicals while the experts do their analysis!
Meanwhile, with so many cases of cancers popping up, lots of communities are running scared — and with good reason.
New York City, Los Angeles and Montgomery County, Maryland, for example, have already banned the installation of any new crumb rubber fields.
And in California, lawmakers have tried unsuccessfully to introduce a bill preventing new crumb rubber fields and playgrounds from being installed until the state presents a study showing them to be safe.
Even the EPA, which proclaimed crumb rubber safe eight years ago, is now saying that “more testing needs to be done.”
Now I don’t know about you, but I’m not going to sit around waiting for federal agencies to do their job. We know enough right now to say that toddlers and young children should be kept off of playgrounds and fields made from these toxic tires.
And if your school or town is considering installing a crumb rubber field or playground, it’s time for you to get involved. You need to inform other parents and officials about the risks, and voice your concern at your next school board or town council meeting.
Especially since there are alternatives such as coconut fibers, cork, or even the very same thing we played on as kids.
And that’s good old-fashioned grass.
To read more about crumb rubber, including ways to take action in your community, click here to check out the website for the Safe, Healthy Playing Fields Coalition.
Sources: “Are synthetic playing surfaces hazardous to athletes’ health? The debate over ‘crumb rubber’ and cancer” David Wharton, February 28, 2016, The Los Angeles Times, latimes.com
