Dr. Robert Whitfield breaks down artificial turf's layers, particularly the crumb rubber infill made from shredded car tires. A single professional field contains 20,000 to 40,000 tires' worth of material. He covers chemical exposure research and practical steps to measure and reduce your toxic burden from the exposure.
Tonight I wanna break down exactly what artificial turf is made of, what the research shows about chemical exposure, and most importantly, what you can do to measure and manage your own toxic burden. This isn't, once again, I'm not trying to be an alarmist or strike fear in anybody. It's just about being informed so you can make really good decisions with the most amount of information. So what is artificial turf actually made of? Well, it's not just a piece of plastic grass stuck in a mat. It's a complex multi-layered system. You actually have the plastic blades that look like the grass, the backing that holds them together, but the infill, the loose material that provides the cushioning. So that's really the problem, right? That's The most common infill is this crumb rubber, which is really made from shredded recycled end-of-life automobile tires, and a single professional-size field can contain the ground-up remains of 20,000 to 40,000 tires.
