
Artificial turf is commonplace on athletic fields all over the U.S. There are benefits to turf: it uses less water, requires less maintenance and has much higher durability than grass fields. But many have become concerned about the impact artificial turf can have on children's health, as well as the burden on taxpayers with synthetic turf costing around $800,000.
Many turf fields are covered in fake dirt called crumb rubber, which is made up of recycled tires. Experts are still trying to figure out how much of a threat crumb rubber poses to children, but we already know that tires contain dangerous toxins. It's just a question of whether or not kids are being exposed to these toxins and what schools and city officials are doing to address the potential exposure. That's what reporter Cara Santa Maria seeks to find out in this video posted on KCET, the largest independent pubic television station in the U.S.
Santa Maria interviews people in the Los Angeles area like Jenny Chamberlain, who avoids turf fields in her area because her child's shoes kept melting from the heat that turf fields give off. She measured the temperature of the turf fields her child was playing on, and they often registered 40 degrees hotter than grass fields. Turf companies claim artificial turf is safe because kids don't ingest the crumb rubber. Chamberlain, however, doesn't buy it because she has seen kids drop an orange, brush it off and eat it—putting them at risk of exposure. Kids also fall on the ground constantly in sports and risk ingesting the crumb rubber that way, too.
Kids might not even have to put the crumb rubber in their mouths. Dr. James Seltzer, an allergy and immunology specialist, says, "There is a number of heavy metals that are present in crumb rubber" and "some of the chemicals in crumb rubber can vaporize into the air, so anybody in the vicinity can be exposed to small amounts of these volatile compounds. Whether those small amounts are truly harmful or not is still a question mark. It hasn't been fully answered," he said.
The potential threat to children's health and well being is enough for Michael Shull, general manager of the City of Los Angles Department of Recreation and Parks. He says that even though the research is inconclusive, the city has already decided to stop using crumb rubber in its fields. Check out this map that shows where crumb rubber fields are in the LA area.
The Los Angeles Unified School District already banned crumb rubber in 2009 because of the health risks. When they tested their fields and found lead, even in low concentrations, they decided to phase out crumb rubber and instead use virgin rubber or cork. Now that all city-operated athletic fields are phasing out crumb rubber, community members who use athletic fields that aren't property of the city and those who live outside of Los Angeles are still concerned about their health and their children's health.
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- Redwoods are the world's tallest trees.
- Now scientists have discovered they are even bigger than we thought.
- Using laser technology they map the 80-meter giants.
- Trees are a key plank in the fight against climate change.
They are among the largest trees in the world, descendants of forests where dinosaurs roamed.
Pixabay / Simi Luft
<p><span>Until recently, measuring these trees meant scaling their 80 meter high trunks with a tape measure. Now, a team of scientists from University College London and the University of Maryland uses advanced laser scanning, to create 3D maps and calculate the total mass.</span></p><p>The results are striking: suggesting the trees <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-020-73733-6" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">may be as much as 30% larger than earlier measurements suggested.</a> Part of that could be due to the additional trunks the Redwoods can grow as they age, <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-020-73733-6" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">a process known as reiteration</a>.</p>New 3D measurements of large redwood trees for biomass and structure. Nature / UCL
<p>Measuring the trees more accurately is important because carbon capture will probably play a key role in the battle against climate change. Forest <a href="https://www.wri.org/blog/2020/09/carbon-sequestration-natural-forest-regrowth" target="_blank">growth could absorb billions of tons</a> of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere each year.</p><p>"The importance of big trees is widely-recognised in terms of carbon storage, demographics and impact on their surrounding ecosystems," the authors wrote<a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-020-73733-6" target="_blank"> in the journal Nature</a>. "Unfortunately the importance of big trees is in direct proportion to the difficulty of measuring them."</p><p>Redwoods are so long lived because of their ability to <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-020-73733-6" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">cope with climate change, resist disease and even survive fire damage</a>, the scientists say. Almost a fifth of their volume may be bark, which helps protect them.</p>Carbon Capture Champions
<p><span>Earlier research by scientists at Humboldt University and the University of Washington found that </span><a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0378112716302584" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Redwood forests store almost 2,600 tonnes of carbon per hectare</a><span>, their bark alone containing more carbon than any other neighboring species.</span></p><p>While the importance of trees in fighting climate change is widely accepted, not all species enjoy the same protection as California's coastal Redwoods. In 2019 the world lost the equivalent of <a href="https://www.worldwildlife.org/threats/deforestation-and-forest-degradation" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">30 soccer fields of forest cover every minute</a>, due to agricultural expansion, logging and fires, according to The Worldwide Fund for Nature (WWF).</p>Pixabay
<p>Although <a href="https://c402277.ssl.cf1.rackcdn.com/publications/1420/files/original/Deforestation_fronts_-_drivers_and_responses_in_a_changing_world_-_full_report_%281%29.pdf?1610810475" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">the rate of loss is reported to have slowed in recent years</a>, reforesting the world to help stem climate change is a massive task.</p><p><span>That's why the World Economic Forum launched the Trillion Trees Challenge (</span><a href="https://www.1t.org/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">1t.org</a><span>) and is engaging organizations and individuals across the globe through its </span><a href="https://uplink.weforum.org/uplink/s/uplink-issue/a002o00000vOf09AAC/trillion-trees" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Uplink innovation crowdsourcing platform</a><span> to support the project.</span></p><p>That's backed up by research led by ETH Zurich/Crowther Lab showing there's potential to restore tree coverage across 2.2 billion acres of degraded land.</p><p>"Forests are critical to the health of the planet," according to <a href="https://www.1t.org/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">1t.org</a>. "They sequester carbon, regulate global temperatures and freshwater flows, recharge groundwater, anchor fertile soil and act as flood barriers."</p><p><em data-redactor-tag="em" data-verified="redactor">Reposted with permission from the </em><span><em data-redactor-tag="em" data-verified="redactor"><a href="https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2021/03/redwoods-store-more-co2-and-are-more-enormous-than-we-thought/" target="_blank">World Economic Forum</a>.</em></span></p>EcoWatch Daily Newsletter
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