Dr. Robert Whitfield breaks down the chemicals engineered into tires that end up in artificial turf crumb rubber: lead, arsenic, cadmium, zinc, benzene, and 6-PPD-quinone, a toxic compound linked to salmon die-offs.
I think everybody would, uh, understand this, that tires are obviously not made to be, uh, safe for, uh, human contact or consumption or anything like that. They are manufactured with a massive array of chemicals to make them durable on the roads, right? We drive high speeds, long distances. When they are ground up into crumb rubber, those chemicals don't disappear. So a comprehensive analysis of these will show hundreds of different types of chemicals in the turf components. And what are we, what are we really talking about? What are we looking at? So we're talking about heavy metals, things like lead, arsenic, cadmium, and zinc. VOCs, so volatile organic compounds, and PAHs, so polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, which include carcinogens like benzene. So just take all that in. That's a lot of concerning chemicals already, and we haven't even got to PFAS. So the, the forever chemicals, which are often used in plastic grass blades and the backing. And then something, uh, called 6-PPD-quinone. It's a highly toxic degradation product of a common rubber antioxidant which has recently gained intention for its effect on salmon.
