What better way for our kids to spend a Saturday afternoon than playing on a toxic plastic field filled with carcinogens and PFAS chemicals? Well, I suppose the fact that they can play even when it rains should be some consolation.

The delta between what the public knows and understands and what scientists know about some of our most serious environmental health issues is, frankly, frightening.  So for those who were unaware of the issues surrounding synthetic turf, let me break it down into its basic parts.

1. Synthetic turf is a giant piece of plastic. You may have heard the news reports about tiny pieces of plastic that now are present in every drop of rain and every breath of air. There are tiny plastic pieces in every piece of fish, every chicken, every hot dog. There are tiny plastic pieces in every bottle of water, even the ones from Fiji.

Recently, scientists at Columbia and Rutgers University announced that they had discovered more than 240,000 microscopic pieces of plastic in a single plastic water bottle.

Considering that plastic is made from a combination of fossil fuels and chemicals, it’s hard to imagine that ingesting that much plastic won’t have any impact on our health, but we don’t yet know for certain.

All we know is, cancers of the breast, prostate, melanoma of the skin, kidney and renal, uterine and pancreas are all on the rise, according to a report published in CA: A Cancer Journal for Clinicians.

Researchers around the world are calling for immediate action to end the production and use of all non-essential plastic. Now, some people may think that a giant plastic all-weather athletic field is an essential use, but I don’t.

2. Synthetic turf uses ground-up vehicle tires to cushion the surface. Up to 40,000 tires may be ground into tiny pieces to cushion a single field. Vehicle tires contain their own brew of toxic chemicals, including dozens proven to cause cancer. On hot days, which is typically when the field is in use, those chemicals volatilize (become airborne) and are inhaled by every athlete on the field. During strenuous play, respiration increases, and the amount of toxic chemicals inhaled increases as well.

The dust from the crumb rubber is displaced with every step, slide or fall. (You can see the black dust trailing an athlete when they slide on a turf field). That dust is inhaled by anyone close to the ground, like the goalie on a soccer team or an outfielder sliding to catch a pop fly.

What’s the impact of a young athlete inhaling black dust filled with toxic chemicals? Well, the illnesses caused by these chemicals can take years to develop, and by then it will be impossible to link the disease to a particular exposure. But to many pediatricians and medical researchers, it seems insane to take that risk with our children.

3. Synthetic turf contains a range of PFAS (per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances), those “forever” chemicals that have been in the news recently, not only for their amazing and troubling persistence in the environment, but for their potential health effects. According to the National Institutes of Health, epidemiological studies (studies on people) have revealed links between exposure to some PFAS and a variety of health effects, including altered immune and thyroid function, liver disease, lipid and insulin dysregulation, kidney disease, adverse reproductive and developmental outcomes, and cancer.

Now, adverse reproductive and developmental problems are not things anyone wants for their children. And neither are any of the other potential health outcomes associated with exposure to these chemicals. If anything, we want to find every way we can to limit our children’s exposure to PFAS. Spending hours playing on a field filled with PFAS is not one of those ways.

And in case someone tries to tell you that “it’s only a tiny amount,” consider that the EPA’s lifetime drinking water exposure level for the most common types of PFAS is four parts per trillion. That’s equivalent to one drop in five Olympic swimming pools.

4. You can’t responsibly get rid of a giant plastic synthetic turf field when it wears out. Old fields are piling up on remote farms in Pennsylvania, where the runoff from their toxic chemicals is contaminating local streams and rivers. Landfills may accept the fields for a price, and try to bury them, but eventually nature will have its way and the chemicals will leach into our environment, unless the landfill invests in some sort of giant plastic diaper to try to contain the toxins.

That’s enough for now. I didn’t even get to the heat issues for young athletes, or the unusual and serious non-contact injuries, or the fact that blood, urine and spit which are normally absorbed and neutralized by the microbes in grass fields need to be dealt with on turf fields by the use of disinfectant pesticides which add another layer of toxicity to the already toxic field.

Yes, synthetic turf fields look nice and can be used in any weather, so no children or parents are inconvenienced.

But bad weather is part of our world, and part of growing up is to understand that sometimes you will be inconvenienced by the weather.

Rather than burdening the earth and all future generations with tons of toxic material that will poison the world we live in, maybe it’s better to teach our children that taking care of the planet is more important than whether they can play baseball when it’s raining.