A long-awaited improvement project to revitalize a community park in the coastal town of Fort Bragg has become a new flashpoint in the national debate over artificial turf and its potential environmental hazards.
Instead of focusing only on the potential harm, which seems small to me, why not do a proper cost benefit analysis? That will bring the issue into a better perspective.
Good idea. I’d like to publish a cost benefit analysis that compared the full cost of the crumb rubber/resin + rubber surface + artificial turf with all production and disposal costs vs compost & grass, which is what the Mosman Football Club in North Sydney chose. In both cases, we would want to include externalized costs … like run-off from fertilizer for the grass field and the cost of production-related waste disposal for the manufactured field. Typically these are born by the communities where these artificial products are produced (which may open another can of worms…) Here’s a short video on the field in Australia https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YBzcZbSyqIQ.
Regarding risks to human health and the natural ecosystem — I don’t know enough to judge whether they are large are small. We’ll be covering what we do know in future articles. I do encourage folks to take in the information one step at a time. With news, you go on a journey with the reporter. It’s different from a draft report like this one: https://oehha.ca.gov/sites/default/files/media/2025-03/DraftTurfReport031325.pdf
I would add to your good list the following — benefits of artificial turfs in the form of fewer injuries which would likely result in more people using the fields for exercise. Maintenance and replacement costs should be considered for both options. I personally am interested in a better (probabilistic) assessment of the risks associated with using this material as opposed to using the worst case as the basis for decision making. For example, our cars contain a lot of PAHs and we are exposed to them for a much longer period of time than the occasional use of the artificial turf.
Instead of focusing only on the potential harm, which seems small to me, why not do a proper cost benefit analysis? That will bring the issue into a better perspective.
Good idea. I’d like to publish a cost benefit analysis that compared the full cost of the crumb rubber/resin + rubber surface + artificial turf with all production and disposal costs vs compost & grass, which is what the Mosman Football Club in North Sydney chose. In both cases, we would want to include externalized costs … like run-off from fertilizer for the grass field and the cost of production-related waste disposal for the manufactured field. Typically these are born by the communities where these artificial products are produced (which may open another can of worms…) Here’s a short video on the field in Australia https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YBzcZbSyqIQ.
Regarding risks to human health and the natural ecosystem — I don’t know enough to judge whether they are large are small. We’ll be covering what we do know in future articles. I do encourage folks to take in the information one step at a time. With news, you go on a journey with the reporter. It’s different from a draft report like this one: https://oehha.ca.gov/sites/default/files/media/2025-03/DraftTurfReport031325.pdf
I would add to your good list the following — benefits of artificial turfs in the form of fewer injuries which would likely result in more people using the fields for exercise. Maintenance and replacement costs should be considered for both options. I personally am interested in a better (probabilistic) assessment of the risks associated with using this material as opposed to using the worst case as the basis for decision making. For example, our cars contain a lot of PAHs and we are exposed to them for a much longer period of time than the occasional use of the artificial turf.