www.SynTurf.org

[No. 02] Harm of zinc. The following is an excerpt from Chiara Canzi, “Turf v. grass: Have county schools rushed to judgment on the safety of synthetic turf?,” in Charlottesville News and Arts, January 13, 2009, available at

http://c-ville.com/index.php?cat=121304062461064&ShowArticle_ID=11801201093638869 :

Although lead seems to have attracted the most attention, some believe another harmful chemical is found in the rubber. “The ground-up rubber tires have just a ton of zinc,” says Nancy Alderman, president of Environment and Human, Health Inc. Alderman’s organization is a Connecticut-based nonprofit that has questioned the safety of these synthetic turf fields for years. A study by the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill cites cardiovascular damage as a possible consequence of continued exposure to zinc. A study by the North Carolina Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services linked high levels of zinc to a decline in plant growth. With as little as 2 percent of zinc mixed with sand, plants stopped growing as a direct cause of zinc’s toxicity. In addition to zinc, the rubber could contain other metals such as arsenic, cadmium, chromium, lead or selenium, according to Alderman.