I need injury, pain and mayhem. Blood optional but helpful.
No, I’m not doing publicity for Dr. Hannibal Lecter. I need athletes and recreational users who’ve been injured at places like Sparks’ Golden Eagle Park.
A major television network is planning stories about “non-contact” injuries on artificial turf.
Perhaps the most famous example happened to Ronnie Lott, the San Francisco 49ers’ Hall of Fame defensive back.
He fell on a sideline play and got one of his pinky fingers caught in a turf seam and broke the finger. (Some of the phony green is even installed using zippers.) Doctors informed him that he would have to call it a season while the pinky healed, and then undergo extensive rehab to get everything working again. Instead, he chose to have the tip of his pinky finger amputated so he could return to competition as quickly as possible.
The most serious artificial turf maladies happen to knees, especially anterior cruciate ligaments (ACL). “Turf toe” is perhaps the most frequent affliction and can be so painful as to sideline an athlete.
Invented by Monsanto, the first “ChemGrass” was laid at Moses Brown High School in Providence Rhode Island in 1964. Re-named for its most famous installation, it became Astroturf in the Houston Astrodome in 1966.
Because it was so hard underneath and caused so many serious injuries, Astroturf was replaced by “field turf,” a kinder, gentler source of mayhem.
Fast forward to the 21st Century and the state of the green art now sports a crumb rubber dark side. In order to look pretty for TV, something was needed to keep the phony blades of grass from being stomped into a ghastly pancake. Going with the cheapest alternative in the finest American tradition, manufacturers began using ground-up old tires as spacers between blades. Watch the feet of athletes during games and you will see them kicking up fine clouds of black dust.
Award-winning former Tribune photographer John Byrne got a picture worth a thousand words, some poor lout riding a turf fluffer at Golden Eagle and kicking up a black toxic cloud. It was pre-COVID and he was not wearing a mask. He should have.
Ground-up tires contain about 100 chemicals, the full effects of which are mostly unknown. However, benzene and lead lurk among them. Both are recognized cancer and brain damage hazards. especially for kids.
Research done at Yale University noted that soccer players are the worst affected for cancer, especially goalies who contract lymphomas and leukemias. (Hartford Courant 9-29-2015) They breathe the hazards countless times per outing, kinda like that hapless Sparks turf fluffer,
Last week, a network TV producer noticed an installment of the longrunning Barbwire toxic turf series, “DO NOT risk your kids at Golden Eagle Park.” (Barbwire 11-6-2019) It came up on a Lexus/Nexus search and I got a call.
The network wants to talk to parents and student athletes who’ve been injured on the made-for-TV phony grass. (Hey, it’s photogenic and cheap. What’s not to like?)
Sparks City Hall has bragged that Golden Eagle is the broadest expanse of the green plague in the United States, so this is a chance for another public relations coup for the Rail City and Nevada. A few years back, I tried to warn our eminent city fathers not to re-carpet the place and instead try this new-fangled stuff called grass.
I ventured up to McQueen High to get down with the plastic pollution.
Student athletes were practicing on the football field. I talked to a couple of coaches about the hazards of crumb rubber turf. They were embarrassed and knew full well the danger to their charges. But they had no power to do anything and I got the impression that they were scared to raise the issue with school administrators.
Crumb rubber turf is epidemic throughout northern Nevada. In addition to McQueen, it infests Carson, Douglas and Damonte Ranch high schools as well as the Jan Evans Juvenile Detention Center, UNR’s Mackay Stadium, Wolf Pack and Peccole parks. That list is by no means exhaustive. Crumb rubber turf is so toxic that it cannot legally be dumped in a landfill.
The University of Nevada-Reno athletic department has never responded to my inquiries.
Since I started exposing this plague seven years ago, I have not succeeded in getting anyone in power to listen. The Nevada Press Association awards the series has garnered are thus cold comfort. Cancer clusters are hard to pin down and take decades to manifest. (Just ask Fallon.) But this potential international exposure about the injury factor can provide a good, high profile addition to the literature on the issue.
So please spread the word. Contact me if you or someone you know has been injured on phony grass. You will be doing the world a good deed and maybe save some kid from severe illness or injury.
REMEMBER MY PEERLESS PREDIXION: Gas prices will magically start dropping after this week’s elections as BigOil has done all it could to elect moonhowlers who will set in cement the Trumpista tax cuts for the corporately wealthy.
In a dark foreshadowing, Wall Street jumped up on Monday in anticipation.
Stay safe and pray for Ukraine and 53 other currently war-torn lands.
Be well. Raise hell. / Esté bien. Haga infierno.
Andrew Quarantino Barbano is a 54-year Nevadan and editor of NevadaLabor.com. Barbwire by Barbano has originated in the Tribune since 1988. E-mail barbano@frontpage.reno.nv.us Phone (775) 786-1455. The complete Barbwire artificial turf archive, including John Byrne’s photo, may be accessed at ConsumerCoalitionv.org/
Bob Custer says
Mr. Barbano claimed: “Perhaps the most famous example happened to Ronnie Lott, the San Francisco 49ers’ Hall of Fame defensive back.
He fell on a sideline play and got one of his pinky fingers caught in a turf seam and broke the finger. (Some of the phony green is even installed using zippers.) Doctors informed him that he would have to call it a season while the pinky healed”
Wrong… Ronnie Lott hurt his pinky while making a tackle against the Dallas Cowboys.