Randall Beach, New Haven Register, June 25, 2015

If someone tell's you the evidence of human health issues related to artificial turf is anecdotal, call their bluff.  That is what Nancy Alderman, president of Environment and Human Health Inc., did in response to columnist Randall Beach when asked about a recent New York Times column by Juliet Macur.  

Here is a portion of Alderman's response to Beach in identifying "what is “not anecdotal” [about the troubling signs that playing on artificial turf might cause cancer]:

  1. “The ground-up rubber tires contain many carcinogens, including carbon black nano-particles and nanotubes. There are 40,000 ground-up rubber tires in every field and these rubber crumbs get into the players’ ears, eyes, mouths, hair, exposing them to the carcinogens that are in the rubber tire infill.”

  2. “The health effects of being exposed to many carcinogens at the same time have never been known.”

  3. “The fact that we now have documented 124 soccer players with cancer — and most of them are blood cancers — is not anecdotal.”

  4. “The fact that the majority of the 124 soccer players with cancer are goalies (85 of them) is expected, as goalies are the most heavily exposed of all the soccer players on a team.” (That’s because they often have to dive into the turf to make saves.)

Alderman concluded: "It is time we stopped experimenting with the health of a whole generation of students who are being forced to play on carcinogenic materials with no government agency, either federal or state, protecting them."