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Slammed on Yale’s field: Will synthetic turf protect brains?
Yale wants to replace its natural grass football field with synthetic turf. That has the chair of the city’s Environmental Advisory Council nervous.
Officials from the university presented a plan at the Westville/West Hills Community Management Team this past Wednesday night to replace the field at the Yale Bowl with one they said would protect players from concussions and other injuries. For some neighbors, the plan raises significant environmental concerns.
Yale’s plan, which comes before the City Plan Commission this week (update: the commission approved the plan), calls for removing about 18 inches of dirt off the top of the field, replacing that with stone, placing a “safety impact mat layer” on top of that and then layering on a new synthetic turf. All of this will help the university guard against concussions, promote playability, and put the bowl in line with other Yale fields that have been replaced with synthetic turf and the fields of the majority of the other Ivy League schools. It is expected to cost about $3 million.
Markeshia Ricks Photo
Jeromy Powers presents plans to change the natural turf to synthetic.
“The bowl is one of the last two fields in the Ivy League that’s still grass,” Yale project manager Jeromy Powers told neighbors Wednesday. “Brown University still has grass but all the other universities have turf already. So the other reason is just to promote the playability. They’re obviously going to travel to other stadiums and be playing on similar surfaces.”
He said the new turf would stop student-athletes from having to adapt to switching back and forth between grass and turf possibly increasing their chances for injury. He said nothing is changing about the structure of the bowl. All the work will take place inside the inner ring. The university also won’t have to paint the field anymore.
“These graphics will be a permanent part of the field surface,” he said. The bowl’s stormwater management system would have to be upgraded as part of the field overhaul; that is a requirement of the city. The upgrade will allow the bowl to hold up to an inch of water on site prior to it entering the city storm system.
Neighbor Janis Underwood asked what Yale intends to do with the soil. Surely, it was filled with the pesticides that it had been treated with over the years she pointed out.
Powers said the soil would be transported off-site and disposed of outside of the neighborhood. It also would not be trucked through the neighborhood. But transported from the Bowl straight out to Derby Avenue and then on to its final destination.
J.P. Fernandes, director of project planning and construction, noted that the soil of the field does contain pesticides but it will be disposed of in a proper place.
Cahn: Say no to turf.
Laura Cahn, a Westville neighbor and chair of the city’s Environmental Advisory Council, questioned the benefits of the proposed new field, noting that “it’s not turf, it’s plastic.” She said the planned engineered, synthetic material can’t replace what good old-fashioned soil does for the environment.
“New Haven is one of the two most important bird migration stops in the Northeast,” she said. “Birds need grass and soil and all the living things that are in the soil to keep going. My house abuts Yale athletic field D. I see many of these flocks of birds alighting on the field stopping on their way to wherever they’re coming and going.
“They rely on this grass and this earth that we are taking away from them,” she added. “The soil, in general, is the earth’s filter for toxins. It absorbs, filters and cleans toxins, that’s what soil does, with all of the microorganisms that live in the soil.”
She raised concerns about the amount of water that Yale’s field hockey field currently requires, the fact that the turf gets incredibly hot in the summer months, that some turf fields require detergents and herbicides and that synthetic materials break down releasing toxins and other pollutants into the environment but never actually disappear. Cahn said such materials end up in landfills where they exist forever.
“It’s more chemicals, more plastic that stays somewhere,” she said. “It is very hard to take a synthetic turf back to grass. Yale already had a lacrosse turf stadium, a field hockey stadium, a softball stadium, a baseball stadium, and a track and field oval … made of synthetic turf.”
“I understand that this is the way that many athletic people think we should go but I hope you disagree,” Cahn added. “I think we should be encouraging Yale, which touts its sustainability, as an institution that leads us forward in a way to stop this poison.”
Kroeber: Turf’s not so bad.
Dan Kroeber, a civil engineer with Milone & MacBroom, said that there has been a lot of research on synthetic turf fields over the years and there have been no documented negative impacts. Milone & MacBroom specializes in the design of synthetic turf fields. He pointed out Yale’s field hockey field is made out of a product that is different from what is proposed for the football field.
“It’s a completely different product,” Kroeber said. “They play on a different type of turf.”
The field hockey field is made out of “the old astroturf product,” or a knitted nylon with no infill, he said. The proposed football field would be made of a polyethylene fiber, infilled with sand and ethylene propylene diene terpolymer (EPDM) membrane. He said the old astroturf has to be watered a lot but, the football field like the lacrosse, baseball, and softball fields won’t be watered at all.
“Once upon a time folks thought was it a good idea, when they first did the lacrosse stadium 10 years ago, to water the field to cool them down,” he said. “They actually found that was a negative thing. The water evaporated and was a respiratory issue for the players. No longer is it advisable to water the field and that’s not going to be done. Certainly, the fields do get hot, there is no denying that. This field as I understand it will primarily be used for Yale athletics in the fall and winter months.”
He noted that it is not advisable for people to use the fields during extreme temperatures. There also would be very little if any use of detergents and herbicides on the field because, he said, there is no need to do so. The field would have a 10-year warranty; the shock layer beneath it, which is made out of a styrofoam-like product, has a 25-year warranty. He also noted that the EPDM is made with brand new rubber, and not old, ground up tires. which tend to have other byproducts like metal in them. (Read here how some environmental advocates have questioned whether that makes a difference.)
“The great thing about the industry is that it is always looking for better ways to use the byproducts,” he said. “The industry is getting better and better about not just landfilling these products.”
Cahn said after the meeting that she still had grave concerns about the plan given its potential impacts on the environment.
I find it hard to believe that athletes are safer on turf fields than on grass. I have had two major knee injuries playing soccer and each one was on turf because there are lots of times that your feet lock on turf and there is not the give that occurs naturally on grass and dirt.
Turf companies try to resolve this by adding bits of rubber from shredded tires into the turf creating both a cushion and potentially greater give. This has been great in finding a way to get rid of those mountains of tires that we used to have. It is not clear that it is better for athletes or for the environment to have this old petroleum laced synthetic rubber on playing surfaces under direct sunlight and heat.
A new way these surfaces are marketed is that companies say they reduce concussions because of a rubberized underlay. But at best, even company sponsored research seems to indicate that they may reduce concussions compared to old turf fields and get closer to grass and dirt. But this presumes that (1) the companies' research is accurate and not self serving and (2) that the rubberized underlay will be maintained and replaced once it becomes compacted over time - which is expensive.
Soccer is played at the highest levels on grass. Take a look at the great soccer fields of Europe -- all grass. Teams that invest hundreds of millions on athletes do not want to lose them to injury from turf. A major fight by the US women national team is to play World Cup games on grass to protect the athletes.
NFL football is somewhat unique in that it does not appear to care about athlete safety, putting players on turf every Sunday. It also lied about concussions and does not offer guaranteed contracts.
But Yale should do a lot more research or should wait until a lot more research is completed by independent experts before it argues that player safety is a reason to have a turf field.
Grass is still the safest and most environmentally appropriate place for kids and athletes to play.