As California installs more artificial turf, health and environmental concerns multiply

Fields of plastic, oregon fake turf, are spreading crossed the Golden State from San Diego to Del Norte counties.

Some municipalities and schoolhouse districts clasp them, saying they are bully for the situation and beforehand kids’ enactment and health. But immoderate cities, including Los Angeles, are considering banning the fields — citing concerns astir children’s wellness and the environment.

Nowhere successful the state is turf usage increasing faster than successful California — connected schoolhouse diversion fields, successful metropolis parks and connected residential lawns. Exact numbers are not known, but it’s estimated that 1,100 acres of the material, oregon the equivalent of immoderate 870 shot fields, are being installed crossed the authorities each year.

In 2025, the Laguna Beach Unified School District and the San Mateo County Office of Education some received biology accolades from the authorities Department of Education for, among different efforts, installing artificial turf.

September 2016 photograph of Laguna Beach High School’s caller shot tract and track.

(Scott Smeltzer / Daily Pilot)

“The fields bash not necessitate water, pesticides oregon fertilizers. They besides supply year-round playing clip without the request for closures for regrowth oregon rainfall damage,” said Laura Chalkley, manager of communications for San Mateo Union High School District.

But a increasing fig of wellness experts, environmentalists and parents accidental the fields are harming children’s wellness and heating up the situation — and they’re pushing their cities, counties and schoolhouse districts to prohibition them.

Terry Saucier, a Tarzana nonmigratory and seat of the SoCal Stop Artificial Turf Task Force, wants Los Angeles to bash that.

“I privation they’d halt calling it grass,” Saucier said. “It’s carpet. They’re taking greenish space, writer and ungraded distant from kids and laying down synthetic carpets.”

The L.A. City Council’s Energy and Environment Committee is studying a imaginable ban. It’s up for treatment successful October. Other cities, including San Marino and Milbrae, already person moved to prohibit the outdoor material.

A emblem shot subordinate kicks up pellets connected the artificial turf astatine Oxnard High School.

(Michael Owen Baker / For The Times)

Turf is designed to look and consciousness similar grass. It consists of greenish blades, made of nylon oregon different integrative polymers, rooted successful a integrative mat. In betwixt the “grass” is simply a furniture of fine, escaped worldly made of recycled tires, rubber, sneaker soles, sand, olive pits oregon coconut.

Researchers, including Sarah Evans, adjunct prof of biology medicine astatine the Icahn School of Medicine astatine Mount Sinai successful New York, said a increasing assemblage of probe shows these carpets person the imaginable to origin harm successful 3 main ways: burns, chemic vulnerability and injuries.

“These surfaces get truly hot,” she said, citing probe that artificial turf tin scope temperatures successful excess of 160 degrees, and tin origin first- and second-degree burns connected skin. She said her ain kids kick that their “feet consciousness similar they’re burning … adjacent with shoes on. So it’s really, truly unsafe temperatures nether a batch of conditions.”

Artificial turf astatine Oxnard High School.

(Michael Owen Baker / For The Times)

In addition, determination are chemic exposures, including from everlastingly chemicals, oregon PFAS, that person been detected successful the blades; endocrine disruptors specified arsenic phthalates; and volatile chemicals specified arsenic benzo(a)pyrene and naphthalene. What the effects are erstwhile children and athletes play, rotation and devour connected the fields is not known. Studies of these and different chemicals recovered successful crumbled tires person shown they tin origin crab successful laboratory animals if inhaled, absorbed done the skin, oregon ingested, Evans said.

There are besides injuries associated with turf fields that don’t typically hap connected earthy fields, including to ankles and knees, she said — the effect of however cleats grip the infill.

Proponents, however, accidental immoderate of those harms person not been established with certainty. And vigor tin beryllium mitigated by watering the fields to support them cool, oregon utilizing earthy infill products specified arsenic crushed up walnut shells oregon olive pits that don’t vigor up arsenic much.

They besides constituent to a draught study from California’s Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment that examined 1 portion of artificial turf, the escaped infill, made of recycled tires. It recovered “no important wellness risks to players, coaches, referees and spectators from on-field oregon off-field vulnerability to field-related chemicals successful crumb rubber infill from synthetic turf fields based connected disposable data.”

Melanie Taylor, president and main enforcement serviceman of the Synthetic Turf Council said the California report, and others, “reaffirmed the information of turf systems, and that “in areas wherever earthy writer is not applicable oregon sustainable, synthetic turf ensures safe, consistent, and accessible places to play, gather, and beryllium active.”

The study came astatine the petition of the state’s discarded agency, CalRecycle, successful 2015. CalRecycle asked the wellness hazard appraisal bureau to analyse tyre infill arsenic a solution to the decades-old occupation of millions of tires piling up successful landfills. Waste officials were looking for ways to uses the aged tires and needed to cognize if they posed wellness risks to radical who mightiness recreate connected the crushed material.

It’s communal for scientists to inquire for extracurricular review, and erstwhile the authorities convened an adept sheet to measure its turf report, reviewers weren’t truthful sanguine astir the agency’s conclusions.

Amy Kyle, 1 of the autarkic technological advisers connected the sheet and a UC Berkeley biology wellness scientist, said she and different advisers had concerns astir respective aspects of the survey plan and methodology — which they lodged successful nationalist treatment — but which were mostly ignored.

For instance, she said, erstwhile a laboratory astatine UC Berkeley analyzed the chemic signatures recovered successful the infill, it recovered much than 400 chemicals but could place lone astir 180 of them.

“That fell retired of the last study ... oregon the last league of the study. Those results, they benignant of near that each out,” she said.

In a transcript from 1 of the sheet meetings successful April, Kyle expressed interest astir the report’s conclusions.

“It’s not an emergency. I wouldn’t evacuate playgrounds,” she told the bureau and her chap advisers. “But if I were advising my person connected the schoolhouse committee astir this, I would accidental I would effort not to usage this stuff. “

Other panelists agreed.

“I’m gladsome my kid mostly played connected grass,” said John Balmes, prof of medicine astatine UC San Francisco.

Jocelyn Claude, a unit toxicologist for the state, reiterated that the study looked lone astatine the tyre infill, and should not beryllium seen arsenic an authoritative California endorsement of synthetic turf. She noted that her bureau did not look astatine the blades, wherever PFAS chemicals person been detected.

“Since we lone looked astatine the crumb rubber, determination are limitations successful what our results authorities and however they tin beryllium applied,” she said.

Finally, Evans and Saucier person concerns for the wider environment: microplastics that slough disconnected the turf and the vigor generated by the fields of fossil-fuel derived plastic, which tin marque a section country hotter.

According to the Synthetic Turf Council, the mean diversion tract uses 400,000 pounds of infill and 40,000 pounds of artificial turf carpet. In addition, probe shows that an mean synthetic turf tract loses betwixt 2,000 and 3,000 pounds of microplastic fibers each year.

“So here, from cradle to grave, we are creating merchandise that contributes to clime alteration and conscionable makes the satellite hotter,” Saucier said. Turf makers accidental they person made improvements to their products to little the somesthesia but admit they tin get hot.