THE GUARDIAN – The lawn replacement – largely fallen out of favor in professional sports these days – contains large amounts of toxic chemicals
A report on a possible link between a rare brain cancer that killed six professional US baseball players and toxic chemicals in artificial turf is raising a new round of questions over whether synthetic sports fields pose a health threat to athletes and others who use them.
The six athletes, who all died from glioblastoma, played most of their careers with the Philadelphia Phillies, a team that for decades competed on artificial turf in Veterans Stadium, the Philadelphia Inquirer reported.
All artificial turf is made with toxic PFAS compounds and some types are still produced with recycled tires that can contain heavy metals, benzene, volatile organic compounds and other carcinogens, and a growing number of US municipalities and states have banned or proposed banning them.
“There is a high number of Philadelphia Phillies diagnosed with this rare cancer, so that should be a red flag.” – Kyla Bennett, of Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility
The Phillies players’ deaths are more evidence that regulators need to prohibit synthetic fields, said Kyla Bennett, a former Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) scientist now with the Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility non-profit.
“There is a high number of Philadelphia Phillies diagnosed with this rare cancer and it looks weird, so that should be a red flag,” said Bennett. “We don’t know what those chemicals are doing to us – what happened to exercising caution when we’re talking about human health?”
However, all brain cancer experts who have spoken with the Guardian or were quoted in previous stories on the Phillies deaths cautioned that it is impossible to prove that the ball players’ cancers were caused by PFAS from the turf.
“The bottom line is anything in the world is possible, but what’s plausible and provable are totally different things,” said Henry Friedman, a neuro-oncologist at Duke University who treated two of the players … read more
Background:
THE NEW YORK TIMES – Darren Daulton and several prominent contemporaries in baseball — including at least three other Phillies who played at Veterans Stadium, the team’s home from 1971 to 2003 — have died of glioblastoma, according to news media accounts. It is considered the most aggressive and frequently diagnosed form of malignant brain tumor.
Other former Phillies who also reportedly died of glioblastoma since 2003 were reliever Tug McGraw at age 59, infielder John Vukovich at 59 and catcher Johnny Oates at 58. Ken Brett, a pitcher who played in Veterans Stadium for one season, died at 55 of a brain cancer that has been identified in some news accounts as glioblastoma.
That same type of cancer is reported to have claimed the lives of other notable major league players, as well as a manager, from the same era: the Hall of Fame catcher Gary Carter at 57, outfielder Bobby Murcer at 62, reliever Dan Quisenberry at 45 and manager Dick Howser at 51.
Brett, Quisenberry and Howser spent part of their careers in Kansas City, where the baseball park at that time, like Veterans Stadium, had artificial turf.
Some former Phillies wonder whether chemicals in those early versions of synthetic turf could have increased the risk of brain cancer, but scientists say they know of no research that supports that theory … read more.
