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by Maria Kopicki
Shutesbury Board of Health voted unanimously on Wednesday April 19, to recommend against the installation of artificial turf at the Amherst-Pelham Regional High School. The decision means that the Boards of Health of all four member towns in the Regional School District have now advised, unanimously, against this product (see here, here, and here). The Shutesbury board noted that it took up the issue at the request of Shutesbury residents and, although the field itself is located within the Town of Amherst, Shutesbury students who attend the regional schools would be impacted by the turf project. The project to resurface, enlarge, and reorient the high school track and replace the interior with an artificial turf field was put forward by the Regional School Committee about a year ago. In the fall of last year, it became more widely known that artificial turf fields contain PFAS, a class of “forever chemicals” with significant detrimental effects. The negative health, safety, environmental, and climate impacts have also come to the fore, prompting resistance from other governing bodies to the project as proposed. The project has failed to receive Community Preservation Act funding from all three member towns that have voted on it since the larger public has become aware of these issues. Read the full story If passed, it would be illegal for any business to sell clothes, cosmetic products, and menstrual products that contain harmful PFAS
Updated: 6:28 PM EDT Apr 19, 2023 by Stephen Biddix MONTPELIER, Vt. —PFAS have been linked to causing various types of cancers in all ages, and Vermont lawmakers are attempting to pass a bill that would eliminate the sale of products with PFAS. If passed, it would be illegal for any business to sell clothes, cosmetic products, and menstrual products that contain harmful PFAS. Sports products that use PFAS, like ski wax and synthetic turf athletic fields, also fall under the bill. View the full report by JC Tretter 4/19/23 For more than a decade, players have been speaking out about their strong preference to work on natural grass over synthetic playing surfaces. Players have shared stories about how their bodies feel after playing on turf compared to grass, and the injury data for nearly a decade supports those anecdotes. However, in early November of last year, there was a large media offensive by the NFL to pushback against the historical data and players’ experiences. The following slide was distributed to the media, and NFL staff and owners were aggressive in their claims that the fight over which is safer, grass or turf, was no longer an issue.  At that time, on a conference call with media members, the NFL’s Jeff Miller stated that “the questions have changed,” referencing questions about which field surface is safer, grass or turf. We as a union believe that knowledge is power, and I wanted to take the time to share additional injury data that can help give a broader view of the often-discussed issue. Here’s what the injury data has looked like over the past decade, using a zoomed-out version of the graph that was shared with ESPN last year:  What this graph shows is that for six consecutive years, injury rates on synthetic surfaces were far higher than on natural surfaces. Read the full article |
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