The Power Point included the following fun fact about the 120 tons of crumb rubber (ground up tires) that would be used to fill in the artificial turf stadium field:
"The human body is unable to digest the rubber material contained in the infill. Any ingested rubber will pass right through the human digestive system."But, as it turns out, that slide was fiction. Kids, please don't eat the crumb rubber.
OEHHA calculated a cancer risk of 1.2 in 10 million based on a one-time ingestion of the tire crumb rubber over a lifetime.
OEHHA also conducted a gastric digestion experiment that found 22 chemicals were released. Five of the chemicals released were carcinogens.
I like mine on ice cream.
ReplyDeleteThe slide does not deny that there are toxic chemicals. There are well-known carcinogens, and lead, in the fields. The runoff goes into our streams and into the Chesapeake Bay.
ReplyDeleteThe slide simply says that the chemicals in the turf aren't in the air. (Although if you've ever been to Maryvale Park on a hot sunny day, the smell of the shredded rubber substrate suggests that might not necessarily be the case...)
ReplyDeleteAnd rubber will indeed pass undigested through the digestive tract; the slide doesn't specifically deny that chemicals will be left behind in the body.
Yeah, that slideshow was a nice bit of spin for what was left unsaid....