Artificial turf: Solution or problem?

By Gilbert Woolley/ Special To The Tab

 

Astroturf, the original brand of artificial turf, was used for the first time in 1968 in the

Houston Astrodome baseball stadium. Many indoor and some outdoor fields were

covered in Astroturf, but the surface was well described by a critic as "carpet on

concrete" and it fell out of favor.

 

In the early 21st century several brands of artificial turf have overcome some of

limitations of Astroturf and other early products.

 

Construction varies in detail, but the newer products try to produce a playing surface

that is close to that of natural turf. This is achieved by adding around an inch and a

half of a resilient material, sometimes mixed with sand, around the synthetic "grass

blades," which can be made of nylon, polyethylene or polypropylene (which in turn can

be made from recycled plastic. The resilient material is, typically, ground up waste

rubber from worn out tires, or in one case, the soles of athletic shoes.

It has been estimated that an average soccer or football field of artificial turf uses

45,000 recycled tires that might otherwise take up space in a landfill or an illegal waste

site. About 250 million scrap tires are generated in the US every year. Today 80

percent are ground up and recycled: 30 percent mixed with asphalt for highways; 30

percent mixed with plastics for molded products which do not need to have a good

appearance; and 15 percent are used for athletic surfaces, including artificial turf.

Artificial turf is low maintenance, and requires no herbicides, pesticides, or watering,

and no need for reseeding. The most important advantage, with respect to the

management of the field, is that it can be played on every day, winter and summer. It

doesn't get bald patches and doesn't get muddy when it rains.

 

Disadvantages are that, in summer, artificial turf gets much hotter than natural turf, but

this problem is not so critical in Massachusetts as some places. Also, dealing with

animal droppings and human "body fluids" is more difficult. On natural turf, there is

natural "treatment" from bacteria in the soil, but on artificial turf solids must be

frequently removed and the surface sanitized. The "sanitizer" must be harmless to the

skin of players.

 

The improved artificial turf has been widely accepted in the US but In Europe the

response has been mixed. FIFA, the international organization governing soccer has

approved Field Turf, one of the newer brands, for all games, except for World Cup

tournaments. (The English governing body for soccer approves it for practice but not

for league games while the Scottish Premier League banned artificial turf for

competition matches in 2005.)

 

The trade association of natural turf providers claims that ground up tires are

hazardous and supports this claim by pointing out that tires are banned from many

landfills. But, in fact, the reasons tires are banned from landfills is that they are a

breeding ground for mosquitoes, create a risk for serious fires that are hard to

extinguish, and that tires are unstable in landfills.

 

Of course, just because turf is "natural" does not mean it is environmentally harmless.

Large amounts of fertilizer, herbicides and pesticides are sometimes used to keep a

field in first class shape. Newton practices Integrated Pest Management, which

reduces the use of these products significantly, but maintaining the fields may still

require the use of materials that we would prefer to keep out of storm drains.

If gas or diesel powered machines are used for mowing, or to spread fertilizer, that

has environmental impact, as does the use of large quantities of water, usually

drinking quality, to keep the grass healthy.

 

It is most likely that, at end of life, the artificial turf may be too heavily soiled to be

economically recycled and will need to be disposed of in a landfill. This is where the

bulk of the material, the rubber, would have gone if not used for turf. But it is now in a

form much preferred by landfills to intact tires. The rubber will not be broken down by

microorganisms in the landfill or dissolved by water and will be there almost "forever",

like most of the inorganic materials that go into landfills today.

The existing playing field at Newton South High School, where there is interest in

using artificial turf, is large and not perfectly level.

 

It has bare spots, especially around the basketball court. It does become muddy in wet

weather. It is liberally covered with goose droppings. The geese use the area for

feeding. They dig in their beaks to extract worms and grubs. If the grass were

replaced by artificial turf, the geese would soon learn that there was nothing to eat in

the area.

 

This writer's opinion is that there are no heavy "environmental" issues involved, and

that the decision to use, or not use, artificial turf should be based on cost over (say) a

ten-year period. Suppliers claim a much longer life. It may be economical to use

artificial turf only in areas of heavy use like the basketball diamond.

 

Gilbert Woolley is a retired engineer. He has been a very active member of the Sierra

Club since 1971, and he served on the Sierra Club National Toxics Committee for six

years.

 

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Hurricane man blows into town

By Lois Levin/ Special To The Tab

Those who braved the cold on Feb. 27 to hear MIT Professor Kerry Emanuel's
Environmental Speaker Series lecture at the Newton Library were captivated by his
clear presentation of complex scientific data from his climate modeling research.
Dr Emanuel's data shows that the intensity of
hurricanes in the Atlantic has grown dramatically -
doubled - in the past 30 years. This is due largely to
human activity. We have released enormous amounts
of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere by burning
oil and coal to create energy to power factories, heat
our homes and run our automobiles. We have
warmed the oceans, including the areas where
powerful storms are formed, and this translates
directly into more powerful hurricanes, with serious
consequences for coastal areas.
New England is highly vulnerable to hurricanes, which
have occurred at a remarkably steady rate for
centuries, averaging one every five years. As these
storms continue to grow more intense, they place us
at increasingly greater risk. Therefore, while we work
to address global warming, we must also empower
public agencies to plan for and cope with these
storms, which expose us to great physical danger and
financial risk. Insurance companies are already
refusing to provide coverage for storm damage in
many coastal areas.
The lecture, sponsored by the Green Decade Coaltion, will be aired on NewTV later
this spring.

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Frozen by uncertainty

By Eric Olson/ Special To The Tab

Global warming is upon us. Even the oil companies tell us so. BP, formerly known as
British Petroleum but now officially just "BP" (after spreading the rumor they wanted to
stand for "Beyond Petroleum") is running full-page ads in major newspapers
encouraging people to take the time to calculate their carbon footprint. The only
reason anyone would take the time is if they first believed there was some problem
with their carbon footprint, i.e., specifically carbon dioxide, the heat-trapping gas
formed whenever a fossil fuel is burned. Climate scientists have been fretting for a
couple of decades now that our species' emissions of billions of tons of CO2 per year
could warm up the planet, and both their models and their observations point clearly
now in that direction. So it is a great relief to see at least some of the major
beneficiaries of our carbon-intensive economy are finally encouraging consumers to
take note.

Let's say you do use the BP calculator or others like it to calculate your footprint. You
provide information on your household heating and air conditioning, your electricity
consumption, your mileage and miles driven, add in a plane trip or two, and don't
forget the hot water heater. What did you get? Between 15 and 20 tons per year? Are
you surprised that I guessed so close? It's not hard. Energy geeks all know that the
typical American house generates just over 13 tons annually, and we just add in 5 to
10 additional tons for transportation. Plane travel is especially costly by this measure.
Now what? This is the question of the decade. There is a great deal of uncertainty
about what if anything we can do on a personal level. Consider first the climate itself:
This is an unpredictable beast and has changed over the millennia all on its own.
There is a slim chance that it will either autocorrect (maybe more clouds will form and
will block the sun) or an act of God will save us at least temporarily (ash from large
volcanic eruptions also block the sun). A second rescue could come from our own
ingenuity: Surely we will come up with something - a cheap fuel from our own
garbage, cold fusion, vastly superior yet cheaper solar panels, etc. A third option is to
turn to the government and shout, "Make everyone suffer equally! Only then will I
accept sacrifice." Finally we could just be resigned to our fate. After all, maybe a
warmer world won't be so bad, really. We could just ride it out and send food to the
people suffering the worst consequences.

A hard-nosed economist, confronted with such uncertainty, might argue for a "wait but
watch closely" approach. If you act too soon, goes this reasoning, you may regret it
when some better option comes along. This sounds sensible, as does so much of
what economists say, but in light of the stakes involved (many species threatened with
extinction, 17% of the land area of Bangladesh to be lost with just a 1-meter rise in
sea level, hurricane intensity in the Atlantic up sharply over the past 30 years), a better
description of this response is "frozen by uncertainty". The deer-in-the-headlights
image comes to mind.

A middle ground is to do SOMETHING, even if it's small. Like get yourself down to
Swartz Hardware in Nonantum and check out their amazingly low prices on compact
fluorescent bulbs (full disclosure: I have no financial interest in that store). This could
be your Step One. Did you know that a single one of these twisty bulbs saves you
over $50 over its seven-year lifetime? Even if they still cost $10 they would be worth it,
but their cost is just a couple of bucks now, and the light quality has improved over
that of earlier versions.

As for Step Two, how about that $50 I just saved you, two lines back? Use that money
to support new renewable, clean electricity generation in New England. There's an
astonishing way to do this, and it gets your money multiplying all over the place.
Here's how it works: The government has already imposed a tiny clean power charge
on our utility bills. Look closely at your NStar bill and you'll see it. This money flows to
an entity called the Renewable Energy Trust Fund, which is charged with encouraging
new clean power (solar, wind, etc.) for the state. If you contribute $50 to support clean
power, the Trust fund will release an equivalent amount back to the City of Newton,
and the City has committed to spending this money on educational solar panel
displays on our public schools. (Oak Hill Middle School will be the first recipient, slated
for this summer.) Then the Trust releases a second $50 match, to support energy
efficiency projects in low-income housing in the state, wherever the need is greatest.
Finally, since this is a donation, you get a tax deduction for it, 100 percent of it. So you
can support new clean power, help put solar panels on a school, make a low-income
family a bit warmer next winter, get a tax deduction, and lo, it's free money to begin
with, because you bought the bulb at Swartz. Would you like to buy a second bulb?
To get going on this and join the growing throng of people voting with their pocket
books for renewable power, call the Mass Energy Consumers Alliance at 617-524-
3950 ext. 129, and ask to speak with Janna Cohen-Rosenthal. You may want to do
those other things - wait and watch closely, shout at the government, etc. - but the first
step is to crack through your own frozen uncertainty and support clean energy. One
lightbulb and one phone call at a time.

Eric J Olson, PhD, is Chairman of the Newton Citizens' Commission on Energy. He
teaches in the Sustainable International Development program, Heller School of
Social Policy & Management, Brandeis University.
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The Dilution Effect

By Jill Hahn / Special To The Tab

 

Here’s a story about a blacklegged tick, a white-footed mouse, an unpleasant

bacterium, and how reducing biodiversity in our own backyards can literally make us

sick.

Lyme disease, which now accounts for about 90

percent of the vector-borne disease (spread by an

animal carrier) in the U.S., is caused by the

bacterium Borrelia burgdorferi, transmitted by the

bite of an infected blacklegged tick, Ixodes

scapularis. A new-born tick does not carry the

bacterium. In order to acquire the bacterium, the

larval tick must take its blood meal from an infected

animal. And here’s where the I. scapularislarvae are

the kind of eaters you wish your children were: they

are not picky. They will feed on a wide variety of

mammalian, bird, or even reptile hosts. The larva

takes one blood meal from the host it happens to

encounter, and then molts into its next stage, called

a nymph.

Most people contract Lyme disease from the nymphal stage of the blacklegged tick,

partly because the nymph is small and hard to spot, partly because it is active in June

and July, when we’re likely to be out enjoying the woods.

What determines whether the nymphal tick that just bit you is likely to give you Lyme

disease? Dr. Richard Ostfeld, senior scientist at the Institute of Ecosystem Studies

(Millbrook, NY), conducted a series of elegant, if messy, experiments to find out. Since

a nymph can only acquire B. burgdorferi during its larval meal, Dr. Ostfeld’s first task

was to determine whether feeding on different animals resulted in differing proportions

of infected nymphs. To do this, he and his colleagues trapped individuals from every

potentially important bird and mammal species in his study site in Duchess County,

NY. This list included deer, robins and other songbirds, white-footed mice, chipmunks,

raccoons, possums, skunks, shrews, and squirrels. The animals (deer excepted) were

caged for 72 hours. Any tick larvae attached to them fell off into pans of water under

the cages. They were collected (a dirty job, because more than just ticks dropped into

those pans during the 72 hours) and tested for the presence of the Lyme disease

bacteria.

Dr. Ostfeld discovered that over 90 percent of the ticks that fed on white-footed mice

tested positive for B. burgdorferi. 40-55 percent of the ticks from shrews or chipmunks

tested positive, and the proportion of positive ticks collected from the other species

ranged from around 15 percent to less than 2 percent. So the host species a larval tick

2

Photo courtesy of Frontiers in Ecology

and the Enivronment

White-footed mouse female

and pups

fed on dramatically affected whether the resulting nymph would be able to transmit

Lyme disease.

Since different species of animal have differing abilities to pass the Lyme disease

bacterium to the tick, this suggests that increased host biodiversity might lower the

prevalence of infected ticks. Dr. Ostfeld dubbed this hypothesis the Dilution Effect.

Ecologists know that, as you fragment forest into smaller and smaller pieces, the

number of animal species found in those forested "islands" declines. If the Dilution

Effect holds true, then the proportion of infected nymphal ticks should increase as

forest area goes down and biodiversity decreases. Dr. Ostfeld and his colleagues set

out to test that prediction.

They measured the density of nymphal ticks in forest fragments of different sizes

(ranging from less than two acres to almost 19 acres) by dragging drop cloths through

the forest and counting the number of nymphs collected. When Dr. Ostfeld tested the

ticks, he discovered that, as the Dilution Effect predicted, the proportion of ticks

infected with B. bergdorferi increased as the forested area decreased.

Why would this be? In the smaller forest fragments,

many potential host species disappeared. One

species, however, whose numbers conspicuously

explode as forest area decreases is the white-footed

mouse. White-footed mice, as Dr. Ostfeld had

already shown, are incredibly efficient at infecting

ticks with Lyme disease.

What does this mean for human health? Simply put,

biodiversity protects us from Lyme disease. If you go

hiking, say, in the White Mountains of New

Hampshire, and you get bitten by a blacklegged tick

nymph, you know that tick had a wide variety of

species from which it could have taken its larval

meal, and most of those wouldn’t be likely to infect it

with the Lyme disease bacterium. On the other

hand, if you’re out on a small plot of forested land in

your suburban hometown - especially if it’s smaller than about five acres - that nymph

that bit you most likely got its last meal from a white-footed mouse, and most likely did

contract the bacterium during that meal. So your chances of contracting Lyme disease

from a tick bite are much higher in the forest fragment near your house than in the

National Forest.

If those cute little white-footed mice are the problem, why not simply get rid of them?

Attempts to eradicate rodents to a level at which they can no longer transmit disease

are notoriously unsuccessful. Attempting to rid the woods of ticks is a similarly

Sisyphean task. There is another solution: let the Dilution Effect work for us by

changing the way we manage our landscape.

Dr. Ostfeld’s work has shown that the loss of biodiversity through the fragmentation of

our native forests has real health consequences. The Dilution Effect holds true for

Lyme disease and may play a role in other vector-borne diseases as well. It’s time to

3

stop thinking of biodiversity as something that would be nice to preserve, but of no

practical value. The next time a local interest in your community wants to break up an

existing parcel of forest into smaller pieces for the sake of development, think about

the health consequences, and think twice.

Jill Hahn, a Newton Highlands resident, is a biologist, a writer, and a mom. All three

roles contribute to her passion about environmental issues. She can be reached at

jkkhahn@comcast.net.

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