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Crumb rubber from recycled tires can contain heavy metals like lead and manganese.
Crumb rubber from recycled tires can contain heavy metals like lead and manganese. Photograph: Dmitriy Feldman/Getty Images
Crumb rubber from recycled tires can contain heavy metals like lead and manganese. Photograph: Dmitriy Feldman/Getty Images

US playgrounds: fears grow over health risks from rubber particles

This article is more than 4 years old

Experts concerned about the safety of crumb rubber from recycled tires – and as Congress lags behind, states are leading the charge

Thousands of playgrounds and sports fields around the country have been covered with crumb rubber from recycled tires, and some experts and lawmakers are concerned about possible health effects on children.

The material can contain heavy metals like lead and manganese, volatile organic compounds like toluene, and polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons. The chemicals are associated with cancer and other illnesses at certain levels of exposure.

Toxic America

But the federal government has yet to weigh in on whether the material might be bad for the young people playing on it, falling far behind schedule on an expected report.

With few answers and many concerns, some communities are banning the crumb rubber infill, including Westport, Connecticut, and Edmonds, Washington. Still others are converting their grass fields in the hopes of limiting injuries and reducing maintenance costs.

Exposure to any one of the chemicals typically found in used tires is concerning, said Homero Harari, with the Institute for Exposomic Research at Mount Sinai in New York. But the mixture is even more worrisome, he said.

“The main concern is that there was a lack of safety testing prior to the introduction of the material in playing surfaces,” Harari said. “As scientists we normally apply the precautionary principle – when we know that there’s concern about a substance or chemical, we normally try to avoid it.”

Crumb rubber often breaks apart, spreading into the air children breathe and getting swallowed when kids put their hands in their mouths.

State lawmakers in Connecticut, New York and Virginia have proposed bills to limit the use of the material or study its effects. Experts say those bills represent a larger trend: states are pursuing their own chemical rules as they see the federal government lagging behind.

States pushing for safer chemicals

In 2019, 33 states introduced legislation related to chemical safety, according to the tracking group Safer States.

Washington state passed the most comprehensive plan yet – to require its ecology and health departments to consider restrictions on five of the most worrisome categories of chemicals that people encounter, through products, food, air and water.

Safer chemical legislation
States push for safer chemical legislation

Although the new law will apply to only one state, local advocates say it is forcing corporations to rethink their chemical policies.

Laurie Valeriano, executive director of the Washington group Toxic Free Future, said Target and other retailers have started to more closely examine the children’s toys they sell, responding to a law requiring disclosure of chemicals.

Valeriano said the companies “see the writing on the wall”, even though the new rules are not coming from the federal government.

“The real changes on the ground affecting health are happening at the local and state level. I’ve been doing this for more than 20 years and that’s been the case,” Valeriano said. “We can get strong protections put in place whereas the federal government is much more influenced by the chemical industry lobbying and money.”

Chemical safety advocates and Democratic members of Congress accuse the Trump administration’s Environmental Protection Agency of favoring the industry over public health, noting that many of the agency’s top chemical officials formerly represented the businesses and trade groups they now regulate.

In Massachusetts, lobbyists fought a ban on flame retardants.

In Vermont, they have opposed a bill that would allow the courts to force polluters to pay for potential victims to visit doctors. Co-sponsor Brian Campion said Vermont’s effort shows “the federal government isn’t doing anything as it relates to these kind of consumer protections, and it’s really being left up to the states”.

Vermont lawmakers approved the bill, but the Republican governor vetoed it.

Quick Guide

Are Americans getting sicker?

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Cancer

Cancer refers to a group of related diseases involving abnormal cell mutation. As these cells grow in number and spread, they can form growths called tumors.

The impact of cancer on Americans has changed over time with medicine, lifestyle and the environment. In the last four decades, more Americans have been diagnosed with cancer, but more have survived, the US National Cancer Institute reports.

In the last two decades, rates of lung and bronchus cancer from smoking (accounting for one in four US cancer deaths) have declined, but remain dominant.

Liver, thyroid and skin cancers, which remain a minority, are on the rise. There is evidence that flame retardants could cause thyroid cancer, and that the chemicals mimic hormones in animal trials.

Obesity

The rates of people who are obese or overweight have tripled globally since 1975. Nearly 40% of US adults are obese, with the most pronounced increase among people considered obese or extremely obese. Most research looks to the “big two”: Americans eat more “energy dense foods”, such as sugar-sweetened beverages and processed foods, and institutional changes have discouraged non-participation in physical activity.

While big two research dominates, other factors may play a role. A growing body of research examines how obesity might be related to an increase in industrial chemical exposure characterized as “obesogens”.

Food allergies

Food allergies appear to be increasing in prevalence, especially in westernized countries. However, the reasons for this rise are unclear, according to Harvard researchers. Even the prevalence itself is difficult to measure, given the dangers of testing large populations for food allergies.

As much as 10% of the population of westernized countries could have a food allergy. Some evidence shows that children of Asian or African descent who are raised in a westernized environment are at increased risk of developing a food allergy.

Infertility

Infertility rates globally are difficult to determine, but the worst rates are in undeveloped countries, and are often indexed to women. Some of the best estimates come from a global survey which compared rates of infertility in 1990 and 2010. Researchers found little change.

At the same time, researchers have become increasingly convinced of a decline in male fertility, especially in the western world. While the cause of male sperm count decline are debated, one increasingly accepted theory posits people’s increasing exposure to industrial chemicals, especially of those used in plastics such as bisphenol A and phthalates, could impact sperm counts.

Learning difficulties

In general, the prevalence of learning disabilities is estimated at between 5% and 9% of the US population. Researchers believe roughly 840,000 school-aged children have a severe learning disability. The percent of students with a learning disability is highly correlated with poverty, and the gap between poor and middle class appears to be widening.

It is difficult to disentangle learning disabilities from poverty, which can also impact health through trauma and the effects of poor housing.

Autism

Autism Spectrum Disorder impacts about 1% of US children, roughly in line with other industrialized nations, according to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Autism diagnoses increased rapidly in recent decades. However, whether the absolute number of people with autism has increased has confounded researchers, as diagnostic criteria broadened and community awareness rapidly increased.

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The proposal grew out of a lawsuit from residents in Bennington, Vermont, who sued a plastics company for allegedly exposing them to a class of nonstick fluorinated chemicals, called PFAS.

The company paid a settlement to connect homes that relied on contaminated well water to a municipal drinking water system. But it has not been required to cover medical monitoring costs.

Connecticut also failed this month to pass legislation restricting that same type of chemical from use in firefighting foam. Just a few days after the legislative session closed, an airport spilled an estimated 50,000 gallons of that foam into a river.

Anne Hulick, director of Connecticut-based advocacy group Clean Water Action, hopes the increased media attention will lead to that bill’s passage next year. “The issue itself was largely unknown to so many of our legislators,” she said.

Drinking water and food packaging

Plastic packaging can potentially introduce chemicals into your food Photograph: Thomas Demarczyk/Getty Images/iStockphoto

States are trending toward regulating classes of chemicals rather than individual chemicals, according to Sarah Doll, national director of a network of environmental health groups called Safer States. That’s because chemical producers often replace a restricted chemical with new ones that have not been rigorously tested. That has been the case with PFAS chemicals that are being found in drinking water around the country.

Maine and Washington have banned PFAS chemicals from use in food packaging. Overall, around half of states considered policies on PFAS this year, according to Safer States.

New Jersey has set a maximum level of PFAS allowed in drinking water, and a handful of other states are considering limits stronger than what EPA advises. The Trump administration’s Environmental Protection Agency has delayed setting a PFAS standard.

The agency is also late with the report on crumb rubber. EPA and the Centers for Disease Control expected to publish the first part of that report – on a study which began in 2016 – early this year.

An EPA representative said the findings have lagged for a number of reasons, “including time needed to meet important federal approvals, challenges in the availability and timing for gaining access to participating organizations, and conducting and addressing external peer review comments”.

The representative added that even when finalized the report will not “constitute an assessment of the risks associated with playing on synthetic turf fields with recycled tire crumb rubber infill”.

Another federal agency – the Consumer Product Safety Commission – is studying childhood exposures to playgrounds made of recycled tires. The commission “intends to initiate a nationwide survey to acquire representative exposure data, and in turn, inform future research in the associated hazards”, according to its website.

The Institute of Scrap Recycling Industries – which represents companies that supply the crumb rubber – argues the materials are “not linked to human health risks,” according to “more than 100 technical reports and studies.”

“Recycling rubber keeps tires out of landfills while making playgrounds safer and sports fields more durable for communities,” the group said.

Researchers have only just begun to examine the effects of crumb rubber on children who play on the surfaces. One recent independent study that tested lead levels in the soil, sand, mulch or rubber surface materials in 28 playgrounds found the rubber surfaces could have two to three times as much lead as the others. High lead levels were found in soil too, making sand or mulch the safer choices.

Advice for parents on playgrounds

The commission advises parents that children on the fields or playgrounds should avoid mouth contact with the surfacing materials, avoid eating and drinking on them, limit play on hot days and wash hands and toys.

Otherwise, local officials making decisions about their playing surfaces are on their own. “Communities, parents, and state and local officials are encouraged to explore the federal agencies’ websites to review the research results available to date,” the commission says.

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