Can Artificial Turf Really Cause Cancer in Athletes?

Is artificial turf harmful to athletes that play on it?  Thankfully, this is something that one athlete made the choice to put a study together for.

The List

In the United States alone, it is estimated that there are 1,399,180 people who are living with or recovering from blood cancers such as leukemia, lymphoma, or myeloma. A group of these people are young athletes, and many are wondering if artificial turf has anything to do with the cancers they have contracted.

Amy Griffin, a former goalkeeper, is also a former assistant coach of the women’s soccer team at the University of Washington. Griffin knew that high exposure to artificial turf could be potentially dangerous, and she decided to look into how playing on artificial turf could potentially impact the health of athletes. Eventually, Griff began to dig deeper into the topic and compiled a list of athletes that she knew of who had been diagnosed with cancer.

Over the years Griffin’s list has grown to one of about 260 athletes. The sport that the majority of those athletes played? Soccer. And the position that over half of those soccer players played? Goalkeeper, a position that requires diving, jumping, and a lot of contact with the turf.

What Exactly is Artificial Turf?

Hundreds of thousands of teenagers, children, and even adults play on artificial turf daily in a variety of sports, soccer being just one of them. Even more, people recognize the small black pieces that make up the majority of artificial turf surfaces and are well-known for getting stuck in shoes, but not as many people realize what these beads are actually made of.

These little black beads are crumbled up pieces of recycled tires that contain possible carcinogens and are toxic and dangerous to humans. These tires are not the only dangerous part of artificial fields. The synthetic pieces of “grass” are colored with artificial pigments and the paints used for lines and logos sometimes include lead, titanium, or other metals.

These tires have so much potential danger that the Environmental Protection Agency outlawed throwing away, burying, or burning these tires. This resulted in an unnecessary surplus of the tires, with nowhere to put them.  The need to get rid of the tires resulted in an increase in the building of artificial turf fields.

There are many advantages artificial surfaces have that grass fields simply don’t. Weather doesn’t have near as much of an effect on artificial surfaces as it does on grass; if it rains one night, an artificial surface is still able to be used, while a grass field will most likely be too wet to play on.

Snow can even be taken off an artificial surface much easier than if the snow was to fall on a real grass field, where it would have to melt, then dry. Artificial surfaces allow for a smooth, even surface, and allow for athletes to have an easier time when running. When athletes transition into high school sports, almost every high school in the country has an artificial turf field for soccer, football, lacrosse, and other sports.

If athletes play on artificial surfaces outside of school and become accommodated to the turf before they get into high school, it makes the transition much easier. Some governments, especially in the state of California, even give federal loans for communities to build artificial turf fields. But all of these advantages have hardly any leverage if these artificial turf surfaces have the potential to give athletes cancer.

Potential Dangers and Real Statistics of Artificial Turf

Assuming artificial turf is responsible for the development of cancers in these athletes, the most popular theory is that simple skin contact to the turf beads is not what is causing the blood cancer, lung cancer, and other diseases, but the accidental ingestion or contact of an open wound to turf beads. Studies have shown that when a ball is kicked or a player turns sharply, sending the pieces of tire into the air, microscopic particles of the turf break off and are small enough to be inhaled by athletes.

Also able to be inhaled is the respirable dust that forms when the artificial blades of grass are exposed to the sun and weather for too long and begin to break down. But perhaps the athlete with the biggest risk of being affected by the potential dangers of artificial turf are goalkeepers.

Goalkeepers dive, jump, and come into contact with the turf more than players in any other soccer position. Sliding, diving, and kicking all send turf beads into the air and provide an opportunity for inhalation of the beads or for contact of the beads to an open wound. Of the 260 people on Griffin’s list, a list of athletes who participated in many different sports, 119 of those people were goalkeepers.

On Griffin’s list were three fourteen-year-olds who were diagnosed with Stage Four Hodgkin’s lymphoma, an incredibly rare situation. Although blood cancers like Hodgkins’ lymphoma were the most common type of cancer found on Amy Griffin’s list, they weren’t the only type.

Athletes had also contracted thyroid cancer, ovarian cancer, and even lung cancer. The median age for a diagnosis of thyroid cancer is 39, according to the American Cancer Society, and of the eleven athletes on Griffin’s list who had been diagnosed with thyroid cancer, ten of them had been diagnosed when they were under the age of 26.

The four athletes who were diagnosed with ovarian cancer were 14, 15, 23, and 24, while the average age for a diagnosis of ovarian cancer is 63 years old. And the three athletes who were diagnosed with lung cancer? All goalkeepers, ages 19, 26, and 27, not one of them smokers.

Correlation and Causation

There is no denying that artificial turf has potential dangers, but does this data show that it can actually cause cancer? Many artificial turf manufacturers have come out to say that the playing surface is safe for athletes, but is it just to protect their own business?

The answer to these questions could be that because more artificial turf fields are being built, more athletes are playing on them, and therefore the reason that the number of athletes who play on turf and are diagnosed with cancer is going up is because there simply are more athletes playing on the surfaces.

With more people, there is more potential for a cancer diagnosis. Griffin herself wholeheartedly agrees that just because there is correlation does not mean there is causation, but states that she is concerned about the abnormal ages for diagnosis and the serious types of cancers young athletes are contracting, artificial turf being responsible or not, and hopes her research can prevent her list from growing any longer.