Artificial Turf: A Dangerous Playing Surface Essay, Research Paper
Artificial Turf: A Dangerous Playing Surface
Some of the changes that have occurred in professional football were
necessary for the game. Pads, helmets and other protective equipment helped the
players safety. Other developments though, especially artificial turf, have
proven themselves detrimental to the game and its participants. Just as changes
were made earlier, they must be made again. Stadiums need to convert back to
grass playing fields for the safety of football players, the satisfaction of the
fans, and most importantly to improve the sport overall.
What Is Artificial Turf?
Like Kleenex or Xerox, AstroTurf has become the popular moniker for all
artificial playing surfaces impersonating natural grass in the modern sports
world. Born in the 1960’s out of a military project to improve the physical
fitness of urban teenagers, AstroTurf,along with its foreign and domestic
impostors that were eventually squeezed out of the industry, was developed as a
cheaper, more durable, low maintenance alternative to grass as a playing surface
for football, baseball, and soccer. The original sales pitch rang true with all
the sincerity of a beer commercial: All the fun of the regular grass, with only
a third of the maintenance. Monsanto, AstroTurf’s original manufacturer, had an
ace in hole as well; grass doesn’t grow very well in domes. Seduced by visions
of conquering Mother Nature and paying a couple kids minimum wage to run a
vacuum cleaner over the field between games, stadium executives across the
nation bought into the AstroTurf movement. However, as the powers that be soon
discovered f or themselves, AstroTurf proved to be neither cheaper nor lower
maintenance than grass, and it had a nasty little side effect. Players, coaches,
and trainers began to notice a substantial increase in the frequency of injuries
on the improved traction and reduced cushion of AstroTurf. Doctors even
identified and named a few new ones, common only to the artificial surface.
Turf Injuries
The relative hardness of AstroTurf has spawned an unpleasant little chronic
injury called turf toe. It occurs when the big toe is crushed into an artificial
surface, ramming the toe back up into the foot and ripping up any ligaments and
tissue it might encounter along the way. A little less serious but somewhat more
messy ailment turf burn, which like turf toe, simply would not exist without
Astroturf. Turf burn occurs just about anytime exposed skin comes in contact
with the artificial surface, which in a contact sport like football, is about
every thirty seconds. Because AstroTurf has about the same texture as a
toothbrush and it can sizzle at about 30 degrees higher than the air temperature
on a hot day, it rips off flesh with the efficiency of sandpaper. And aside from
the nagging pain and constant threat of infections, turf burn offers the added
bonus of making you stick to your sheets every night as you sleep. These,
however, are but minor ailments. The notion that an increase in major injuries,
particularly to the anterior cruciate ligament in the knee is a direct result of
AstroTurf has been a more hotly debated issue. In 1974, the Stanford Research
Institute International (SRI) completed a six year study commissioned by the
National Football League on the health effects of artificial turf. SRI reported
that “in 17 out of 17 categories, natural grass was safer to play on than
artificial surfaces.” Joe Grippo, the director of SRI, later admitted that
“synthetic surfaces could not be justified, not on an injury prevention basis,
not on a relative cost basis.” Those facts, however, did not stop the NFL
Players Association from conducting its own injury studies. The NFLPA concluded
for the 1984 season that “the average turf injury took longer to heal, that the
number of players increased by a third and that the number of missed games
doubled when the injuries occurred on turf.” More recently, an ESPN poll
conducted in September 1995 likewise found that 98 percent of NFL players
believe playing on AstroTurf will shorten their careers. The NFLPA’s reasoning
for the increase in injuries echoed what common sense and trainers across the
League had been saying for years. AstroTurf, because of its augmented traction,
split seems, and permanent high and low spots (known as “birdbaths”), sometimes
causes a player’s feet to stick to the ground. “The resulting torque places
enormous pressure on joints like the knee and the ankle, resulting in a greater
number of torn tendons and ligaments.”
Football Players’ Preferences
The results of a January 1997 study by the NFL Players Association showed that
nine out of 10 NFL players believe playing on artificial turf is more likely
than grass to cause the kind of serious injuries that shorten careers. The
written survey was conducted by NFLPA staff members at team meetings during
the1996 NFL season, as a follow-up to a similar survey conducted during the 1994
NFL season. The 1996 survey revealed that 86.7% of the 1034 players who answered
preferred to play on natural grass (up from 85.1% in 1994), while only 6.3%
preferred artificial turf (down from 7% in 1994) and 7% had no preference (8% in
1994). Almost three-quarters (74%) of NFL players in this survey also indicated
that playing on a natural grass surface was either very important or somewhat
important in selecting the teams they would consider signing with as free agents
(up from 70% in 1994). NFLPA Executive Director Gene Upshaw stated: “This survey
underscores the overwhelming and increasing preference of NFL players for top-
quality natural grass playing surfaces. Given the need of every NFL club to
recruit free agents to remain competitive, we expect that many NFL clubs will
recognize the obvious advantage they will gain by converting to or upgrading to
a first-class natural grass playing field.” When asked to rate the five best
playing fields the players chose the following:
Ranking Stadium
Field Surface
1 Tampa Stadium
Natural Grass
2 Joe Robbie Stadium in Miami
Natural Grass
3 Jacksonville Stadium
Natural Grass
4 Sun Devil Stadium in Arizona
Natural Grass
5 Arrowhead Stadium in Kansas City
Natural Grass
Players rated the worst stadiums as follows:
Ranking Stadium
Field Surface
1 Veterans Stadium in Philadelphia
Artificial Turf
2 Riverfront Stadium in Cincinnati
Artificial Turf
3 The Astrodome in Houston
Artificial Turf
4 Three Rivers Stadiumin Pittsburgh
Artificial Turf
5 Giants Stadium in New Jersey
Artificial Turf
Other results of the survey:
93.4% of NFL players believe that artificial turf is more likely than grass to
contribute to injury.
90.9% believe artificial turf is more likely to shorten their careers.
83.9% believe artificial turf is more likely to worsen their quality of life
after football.
94.8% believe artificial turf causes more soreness.
58.9% believe artificial turf causes more fatigue.
52.5% identified an artificial turf injury they suffered that they believe would
not have happened on grass.
Medical Evidence Linking Turf and Injury
Examining 25 scientific journals, Dr. Willibald Nagler, the Anne and Jerome
Fisher Physiatrist in Chief at the Cornell Medical Center in New York City, and
his colleagues found that foot and knee injuries on synthetic turf in some
cases occur about 50 percent more than on grass. And when injuries do occur,
they often are more serious and difficult to heal than those that occur on grass.
Nagler explained that synthetic turf does not allow the foot to slide when it
hits the ground, and ligaments in the feet and knees rupture — injuries that
can be “debilitating and painful for an athlete, and difficult to heal and to
treat.” Ligaments whose sole function is to keep the joint in place are not
elastic, Nagler emphasized, and they rupture either partially or completely. “It
takes quite a long time to heal if they are even partially ruptured,” said
Nagler, a specialist in rehabilitation medicine. “The ligament actually comes
apart, and it loses its functional value. It doesn’t hold the joint together
anymore.” Treatment is to immobilize the joint in a plaster cast or surgically
suture the ligament back together. That is difficult because the surgeon has to
take ligament from someplace else, and the procedure is not always successful.
Football on grass results in fewer ligamentous injuries, Nagler said, and those
that do occur are not as severe, according to the published scientific articles.
Furthermore, synthetic turf may exacerbate existing injuries, or make healing
take longer, the studies show. Nagler and Dr. Debra Braverman of the Department
of Rehabilitation Medicine examined more than two dozen scientific journals to
compare ligamentous football injuries. Among them: Journal of Sports Medicine,
Clinical Orthopedics, the Journal of the American Medical Association, and
others. He was motivated, he said, “because there is a lot of anecdotal
evidence, but no one’s really searched the literature to see if it’s true.
There is definitely an increase in ligamentous injuries on artificial turf.”
Financial Downfalls of Astroturf Fields
AstroTurf has generally failed to prove itself any less expesive than grass.
The Monsanto company’s claim, just before it sold its AstroTurf division to
Balsam, was that grass would cost $40,000 annually to keep in shape compared to
only $4,000 for AstroTurf. However as noted by Alex Hill of Colorado University,
natural grass is still cheaper to install, and in a football exclusive stadium
the total cost over a ten year period is about even for turf and grass at just
over a million dollars. Moreover, those statistics don’t even account for the
single greatest fear of many: the possibility that a star with a guaranteed
multimillion dollar contract will trip on a seam in the turf, rip apart his knee,
and spend the rest of his career in rehab programs. It is a cost that is
measured in missing Super Bowl rings as easily as it is in dollars and cents,
not in groundskeeping costs.
The Solution
An ESPNET poll revealed that of 4650 fans surveyed 97 percent preferred watching
games played on natural grass. Players in the NFL prefer natural grass, and
their protection is most important. They are after all your investment in
financial and athletic success as are the fans. Having grass fields installed
in your stadium will also attract free agents as well. Astroturf’s time is up,
it’s time for a switch back to grass. The investment in a natural grass playing
surface will ease the minds of players, fans and coaches alike and let them
concentrate on the more important aspects of football