ISRI CONVENTION 2015: Tire recyclers battle cancer claim

An established end market for North American tire recyclers has run into sudden scrutiny as a potential health hazard. Tire recyclers who attended a session at the 2015 Institute of Scrap Recycling Industries Inc. (ISRI), held in April in Vancouver, Canada, received an update on often-repeated claims being made about crumb rubber as an additive to sports playing field surfaces.

 

In October 2014, NBC News broadcast a report that provided a forum for a theory formulated by University of Washington women’s soccer coach Amy Griffin, who says the crumb rubber being used as a shock absorber or infill material on synthetic turf fields is causing lymphoma, a type of blood cell cancer.

 

The NBC report includes the phrases, “No research has linked cancer to artificial turf,” and “NBC’s own extensive investigation, which included a review of the relevant studies and interviews with scientists and industry professionals, was unable to find any agreement over whether crumb turf had ill effects on young athletes.” However, the gist of the report was to cast a wary eye on crumb rubber as a possible link to lymphoma cases being experienced by soccer players.

 

The topic of the NBC report has been repeated subsequently in numerous articles, at times without the disclaimer that there is no research linking crumb rubber to cancer—or that numerous studies have been conducted to receive approval for the use of crumb rubber in playing fields and at playgrounds.

 

Rick Doyle of the Synthetic Turf Council (STC), Atlanta, told ISRI session attendees that the unsubstantiated allegations about crumb rubber are not new, and that similar reports from 2008 had subsequently “been debunked.”

 

However, the new allegations in 2014 and 2015 prompted the STC to call upon Terry Leveille of TL & Associates, Fair Oaks, California, to fend off the charges in the court of public opinion and in legislative chambers when necessary.

 

Leveille told ISRI attendees that in reaction to Amy Griffin’s allegations, four states introduced bills to regulate the use of crumb rubber as a turf additive. Leveille and the STC were quickly able to offer testimony that defused the situation in Virginia, and in Minnesota a promise to fund a new $50,000 study has staved off a proposed moratorium on the use of crumb rubber as a turf additive. (The New York legislature is currently in a recess period, so that negotiation lies ahead.)

 

The fourth state, and the one where the STC is facing a critical struggle, is California. Leveille says some California legislators are requesting a multi-million-dollar study to prove crumb rubber’s safety. Leveille says such a study was already conducted by the United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) in 2000, and additional studies have repeated its finding.

 

“All the results” of such studies, said Leveille, point to “undetectable or insignificant” levels of lead or other potentially harmful substances, “below parts per million minimums” established by the EPA and other agencies. In the meantime, the STC is attempting to stave off a proposed moratorium on the use of crumb rubber on playing surfaces in the Golden State.

 

Speaking for the STC, Leveille told the assembled tire recyclers, “Our position remains that crumb rubber is the infill of choice of 98 percent of installations. The [unsubstantiated allegations] are a threat to the whole [synthetic turf] industry.”

 

The 2015 ISRI Convention & Exposition was at the Vancouver Convention Centre April 21-25.