What Is Artificial Turf?
Artificial turf features three parts:
Plastic blades of grass
Infill for support
Backing material
The infill of artificial grass comes from recycled tires, which is where many of the concerns regarding safety come from.
Why Might It Be Bad for Kids?
Some worry about the safety of synthetic turf because manufacturers expose tires to chemicals during the manufacturing process. The danger comes when kids slide around on the turf and cover themselves in fragments of the infill.
The issue came to the fore in 2014 when an investigation found that goalkeepers on American soccer teams experienced strange rates of non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma and other cancers. A list of players with cancer included 38 total players with 34 of them playing as goalies.
However, many of those players came from Washington state, and there was no discussion of whether another environmental factor might be to blame for the incidence of cancer.
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