Bellingham School District is making a terrible mistake.
Dr. Greg Baker, the current superintendent of the Bellingham School District, is quickly building a new artificial turf sports stadium at Bellingham High School. Squalicum High School’s new crumb rubber artificial turf field has already been installed. Sehome High School’s shredded rubber field is coming soon. The advisory committee, having been informed that shredded tires are safe, happily rubber-stamped the idea. School district employees did some research and found assurances from the tire recycling industry that their crumb rubber artificial turf is safe. The Whatcom County Health Department apparently approved crumb rubber use based on these flawed industry assurances.
Crumb rubber is a relatively new, benign-sounding name for a toxic product made of carcinogens, poisons, heavy metals and neurotoxins in the form of shredded tires. If you have ever watched a game played on artificial turf you may have noticed a cloud of black dust puff into the air every time the ball bounces on the green plastic field. This is a telltale sign of artificial turf made from shredded tires.
Natural rubber makes up only 15-20% of the volume of a tire made in the United States. The principal chemical components of synthetic rubber tires are styrene and butadiene. Styrene is a neurotoxin, and butadiene has been shown to cause leukemia and lymphoma. Then add tire black, benzene, lead, and mercury; all are known carcinogens and neurotoxins. They can cause permanent brain damage in infants, and remember, adjacent to the new Bellingham High School field is the Options school, future home of pregnant high school teens and their infants.
In 2015, a Yale University study of synthetic playing surfaces made of ground-up waste tires listed a dozen known carcinogens:
Mercaptobenzothiazole, toxic to aquatic life (think Whatcom Creek)
Dimethylanthracene, a respiratory irritant that can also cause asthma
Bis(2-ethylhexyl) phthalate, which may also damage fetuses (adjacent Options Facility)
Fluoranthene
Heptadecane
mercaptobenzothiazole
Phenol, 4-(1,1,3,3-tetramethylbutyl)
Phenanthrene
Phthalimide, also a skin, eye and lung irritant.
Pyrene, 1-methyl
Tetratriacontane, an eye and skin irritant that can cause damage to central nervous system.
Pyrene, which is toxic to the liver and kidneys
The Huffington Post recently published an article on the dangers of artificial turf featuring Amy Griffin, an associate head coach for the University of Washington women’s soccer team, and a goalkeeper for the U.S. National team, winners of the first Women’s World Cup in 1991. Griffin has been informally tracking American soccer players with cancer since 2009 when she noticed that a “stream of kids” who had played soccer on artificial fields had been getting sick. Griffin told NBC in 2014 that she’d heard from 38 soccer players who’d been diagnosed with cancer. That tally has climbed to 220 athletes — 166 of them soccer players. The number continues to grow as more cancer victims read about the connection to artificial turf fields.
One “advantage” to the Bellingham School District in choosing to use crumb rubber artificial turf is cost. The artificial turf field for BHS was $1.75 million. In 2013, voters approved “turf” for the three high schools as part of a $140 million school levy. For the three high school sites, multiply $1.75 million times three for an estimated total cost of $5.25 million. With interest, figure another 50%, so call it $8 million. Now add lights, a public address system, and bleachers, and the school district has three sports fields…with known cancer-causing toxins.
Now is the time to step in and halt this plan that will expose our children to known health risks. Re-turfing the fields with natural grass fields is simple and relatively cheap. Real grass fields are safe, and with improved drainage and reasonable usage they will serve us better than new toxic turf.
Call your School Board today and demand they halt the toxic artificial turf. Encourage them to choose safe, natural, grass fields as the safest alternative for our kids. Especially given the growing evidence of cancer risk from crumb rubber fields.
Contact information: Bellingham School Board
Douglas Benjamin, School Board President
Phone: 202-6150
Kelly Bashaw, School Board Vice President
Phone: 220-4006
Camille Diaz Hackler, School Board Director
Phone: 441-1808
Quenby M. Peterson, School Board Director
Phone: 306-2321
Steven Smith, School Board Director
Phone: 393-1518
Comments by Readers
Gaythia Weis
Jul 12, 2017Re: Artificial Turf using crumb rubber from recycled tires:
http://medicine.yale.edu/lab/ cjohnson/projects/turf.aspx
I would assume that publication is likely to be in progress.
Gaythia Weis
Jul 12, 2017The problem with the Amy Griffin related cancer data is that this is in the corrlation does not prove causation format. There is some subsequent information online indicating that groupings of athletes including these cancer victims actually has less cancer overall than the general population. That itself is biased, of course, because cancer victims may be less likely to be athletes. Again, more data is needed. IMHO, the EHHI work seemed to be the most scientifically definitive at this point in time.
Tim Paxton
Jul 13, 2017Most parents subscribe to the precautionary principle, for everyone’s children. If we know that tires are made up of toxic chemicals. It does not follow that shredding them and putting children in close contact to get these shredded tire particles into lungs, stomachs, skin is a good idea.
Anyone who defends placing children in a situation where they can actually more efficiently die from toxic exposure an organized sport, should perhaps go visit some cancer stricken young atheletes and ask them what they think of a pending study showing how safe this idea is.
Tim Paxton
Jul 14, 2017Update Friday night at 9pm. Construction equipment is working frantically in near dark at BHS to get the shredded toxic tires spread ASAP. They had bond approval in 2013.
But not approval for carcinogenic toxins spread in direct violation of Washington’s Model Toxics Control Act (MTCA) which covers “Product” (recycled tires) that leach toxins into State Waters. This is how the Bellingham School District cares for children. Do it’s dirty work faster.
Tim Paxton
Jul 15, 2017Update July 15 - 7 AM Saturday Morning. The School District has rented out the BHS campus to the huge RAGNAR Relay event for the weekend. Hundreds of people will be milling about all day.
Right next to the tents, paviliions, porta pottis, relay finishs, etc. The construction equipment is busy busy scraping away on what was a lovely summer Saturday morning. Tractors scraping gravel at 7am? Really Greg Baker?
It appears that the School District needs to race ahead to finish dumping their toxic and flammable tire waste, as if that will solve the problem.