Turf Wars: Natural Grass or Synthetic Turf?
Pennsylvania school districts weigh benefits of artificial turf
Courtesy of The Intelligencer
Written by Ed Kracz
April 30, 2006
Rain drummed on his helmet. His feet churned plumes of water and clumps of mud.
Jim Bowman was in the open field, running free. Eleven opposing football players pursued him. They weren't the immediate threat.
It was the sludge beneath his feet. It tugged at his cleats, trying to suck them off. Each step ended with his foot nearly covered in muck.
Bowman was Quakertown's quarterback against Central Bucks East in a game at War Memorial Field last October. By the end of the game, he was no longer the team's quarterback. His season was over.
Once he dashed into the open field, Bowman made a cut. This time, the slop didn't surrender his foot. A tackler freed it, but, by then, Bowman's lower left leg, near his ankle, was already broken.
"I never saw a guy break a leg or ankle that way, in the open field, in a one-on-one situation like that," Quakertown coach John Donnelly said.
Deplorable conditions on playing fields around the region, brought on by excessive use and extreme weather, have forced school districts to examine how, and at what cost, to keep their fields green and flourishing as well as safe and sound.
Christopher Dock and the North Penn School District, as well as several other school districts, believe they have found the solution: synthetic turf. Others, such as Central Bucks and Pennridge, are exploring that option.
In addition to costs -- a turf field can cost as much as $1 million -- school districts need to weigh the impact a synthetic surface will have on injuries, such as the one Bowman endured.
One of the few studies that has addressed the issue found that turf can be more forgiving than grass, especially when it comes to concussions, but not when it comes to muscle strains and sprains.
Because turf can cause more brush burns, there are also bacteria concerns, particularly the stubborn bacterial skin infection known as MRSA.
Running into the ground
The synthetic turf being peddled these days isn't the same rug that lay in Veterans Stadium for years, spoiling countless careers of professional football and baseball players. The new stuff, termed "second-generation turf" by Delaware Valley College associate agronomy professor Dr. Douglas Linde, is state of the art.
"It's just like a carpet in your house," said Dan Dristal, the business development officer for Forever Green Athletic Fields in Langhorne.
"You can cut, plant and release on our surface," said Darren Gill, the marketing manager for FieldTurf, a Montreal-based company that has installed more than 1,800 synthetic fields since opening about 10 years ago.
Turf allows games and events to go on as scheduled no matter the weather, and in spring and fall the weather in Southeastern Pennsylvania is as unpredictable as Powerball numbers. Last fall, hurricane-driven rains periodically lashed the area, leaving fields soft and pliable, vulnerable to anyone who set foot on them.
This is how bad it was at War Memorial Field on the night Bowman broke his leg:
"From one 10-yard line to the other 10-yard line, you couldn't walk, let alone play a football game on it," Donnelly said. "After one drive, we couldn't even pick up the numbers of our players (because) they were covered in mud."
With so many events crowding onto one field -- football, boys and girls soccer, boys and girls lacrosse, field hockey, band practices and competitions, physical education classes -- and, in some cases, two schools sharing the same field, as Central Bucks East and West do and various middle schools do with their high schools, the big-dollar investment in turf seems to make sense.
"Under heavy use, it's hard to grow grass," said Linde. “The field becomes very hard to maintain because you wear out the grass too quickly. The only solution is to re-sod every year, but then you wear that out, and it's costly to re-sod. It may be $50,000 every year to do that.
"Trying to grow grass from seed is difficult with so much usage because the field never rests. At CB West, you'd have to take the spring or fall off to get the field to come back, and that's not an option."
Linde defines heavy field use as between 50 to 60 events, which is about the same number of events scheduled for War Memorial Field, according to CB West athletic director Sean Kelly. At Pennridge's Poppy Yoder Field, that number is estimated to be 70 or more.
Palisades joined the turf club three weeks ago, agreeing to dole out $1.54 million (some of that price includes the installation of an eight-lane track surrounding the field) for a synthetic field that will be installed this summer. Souderton decided at its school board meeting on April 12 to put a turf field at its new high school. Central Bucks may soon follow, with a vote expected as soon as next week on whether it will carpet War Memorial Field in time for next fall.
Although studies indicate second-generation turf -- born roughly 10 years ago -- is easier on the body's joints than the AstroTurf at the now-imploded Veterans Stadium was, it is still too new to make any long-term safety prognostications.
One concern is bubbling just beneath the surface -- the surface of the skin, that is.
Infection fears
In the fall of 2003, MRSA affected five members of the St. Louis Rams' football team. MRSA, a quick-acting bacteria that invades the body through cuts in the skin, also affected 10 football players on a Connecticut college team that same season.
Researchers blamed turf burns, or areas of skin scraped raw by artificial turf, as both the source and means of spreading MRSA.
"These abrasions were usually left uncovered, and when combined with frequent skin-to-skin contact throughout the football season, probably constituted both the source and the vehicle for transmission," wrote researcher Dr. Sophia V. Kazakova and colleagues in the Feb. 3, 2005, issue of the New England Journal of Medicine.
Turf burns are the common complaint of artificial turf. One study revealed there was a significant increase in surface and epidermal injuries on turf.
"The No. 1 pitfall to using a turf field, particularly with football, where you have a lot of collision and falling down, is the brush burn," said physical therapist Rob DiGiacomo, the director of the Moss Rehabilitation sports rehab program. "The No. 1 downfall is open wounds, the propensity for getting open wounds and the introduction of bacteria."
"They can be nasty little wounds, and they can be big, too. That is the No. 1 detriment to a turf field that, in my mind, hasn't been solved yet."
Also at issue are athletes who shave various body parts -- for instance, ankles for taping or girls soccer and lacrosse players who simply shave their legs -- which can create micro-abrasions.
A study of football players conducted by the Infectious Diseases Society of America from Aug. 6, 2003, to Oct. 1, 2003, found that players can contract MRSA on areas of the body that had been covered with their uniforms because of micro-abrasions caused by shaving. Athletes who shaved, according to the study, had a 43 percent risk of a MRSA infection.
Second-generation turf is softer and spongier than the original version, which was born under the name Chemgrass in 1965 and, a year later, renamed AstroTurf ® when it was installed in the newly opened Houston AstroDome. Crushed stone is used as the base and is then topped by a playing surface that is filled in with sand and/or rubber chips.
Technology has changed frequently during the nearly 10 years since second-generation turf was developed. One of the more recent innovations has come in the fibers that are used in place of grass.
Many of today's high-end fields use fiber made of polyethylene and/or polypropylene instead of nylon, which is designed to cut down on abrasions.
"The new stuff is pretty nonabrasive," said Dristal, the employee of Forever Green Athletic Fields. "Burns are very minimal. You could get them anywhere, even on natural grass with skin rubbing off."
Bacteria can remain in a synthetic surface for as long as three hours -- about the average length of a football game -- according to Clare Edelmayer, the infection control coordinator at Doylestown Hospital. Rain wouldn't be enough to get rid of the bacteria either, only if, Edelmayer said, "it rained with disinfectant."
Dirt can contain bacteria too, but it tends to disburse quicker.
Bacteria aren't the only concern on a synthetic surface. So too are blood, spittle and vomit.
"On a natural surface, that will break down," DelVal's Linde said. "On a synthetic, it won't."
Dristal contended: "If you have a big pool of blood, I'd go out and clean it even if it was a natural field. I'd go out and get it off of there. I'd treat it exactly the same as a grass field."
"Which injury do you want?"
Central Bucks Superintendent N. Robert Laws said at a school board meeting earlier this month that studies show there are fewer broken bones and pulled muscles, tendons and ligaments on artificial turf than there are on natural surfaces.
He's partly right, but there is little long-term research to draw upon.
A five-year study of high school football injuries from the Human Performance Research Center at West Texas A&M University and Panhandle Sports Medicine Associates in Amarillo, Texas, released late in 2004, revealed a greater percentage of concussions on grass than turf, but overall, there are slightly more injuries on turf than grass.
The study, which was conducted by Dr. Michael C. Meyers, the department head of sports and sciences at West Texas A&M University, and Dr. Bill S. Barnhill, an orthopedic surgeon, evaluated 240 high school football games over a five-year period. Some of the revelations:
* Injuries that cause a loss of playing time up to three weeks -- injuries termed "minor" -- were slightly greater on turf.
* Injuries that cause an athlete to miss more than three weeks -- injuries termed "severe" -- were higher on grass.*There were more muscle and ligament strains and sprain injuries on turf but more ligament tears on grass.
* And fractures are actually more likely to occur on turf than grass.
"The crux of the issue is you get injured on both," Meyers said. "There was a lower incidence of concussions and ACL (knee) injuries on turf, however, because turf is a faster surface, where you get higher torque, higher velocity. With players running faster, you get greater collisions, and we found there are more muscle sprains, strains, things like that.
"I usually joke, which injury do you want?"
Turf companies take into consideration something called g-max, which measures the absorption of energy on a field when the head hits the ground. Any number above 150 is considered dangerous.
"A natural grass field, at the beginning of the year, may start at 140, 150, but at the end of the year, it's around 200," Dristal said. "A typical artificial grass field, with the new technology out there, would be around 100 and probably would never go higher than 120."
George Collins, the athletic director at Harry S Truman, who helped spearhead that school's installation of a synthetic field that debuted in September 2004, proudly points to the safety record of his field.
"We haven't had a broken bone on this field yet," he said. "I sincerely believe, and most of the literature is very favorable in that area, it's a much safer field."
So the choice for school districts becomes: Do they remain with grass and dirt and try to keep it playable or go with a synthetic surface, which appears safer on the body's joints but has the potential to give athletes a skin infection?
*Jim Bowman's leg has healed, after several weeks spent rehabilitating it. He understands the injury was part of the game, even if it's a game he never got to play again.
"It was certainly a muddy field, and conditions were very poor, so I guess that was the main cause of (the fracture)," he said. "I don't think it would have broken on an AstroTurf ® field, but you never know."
