April 21, 2023 • 59 mins
At first, it sounded too good to be true: grass that never died, never wilted, and never gave way to weeds. Major league baseball hailed it as one of the greatest innovations in the world of professional sports. As thousands and thousands of 'astroturf' fields sprouted up across the US and Canada -- and then spread to playgrounds -- adults and children alike enjoyed seas of endless, verdant green. Until, that is, the reports came in. In today's episode, Ben, Matt and Noel slide headlong into the home base of a troubling conspiracy decades in the making: Does artificial turf give you cancer?
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies. History is
riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or
learn this stuff they don't want you to know. A
production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2 (00:24):
Hello, welcome back to the show. My name is Matt,
my name is Nol.
Speaker 3 (00:28):
They call me Ben. We're joined as always with our
super producer Paul. Mission control decands. Most importantly, you are
you are here, and that makes this the stuff they
don't want you to know. Weirdly enough, this episode is
very baseball centric at the beginning. But look, if you
(00:48):
don't love baseball, if you're not a baseball nut like
our pal Max Williams, never fear. Don't let that dissuade you. Because,
fellow conspiracy realists, you may recall in an earlier part
of our weekly Strange News segment, Matt, you brought a
pretty disturbing story about some revelations related to baseball and
(01:11):
long term health consequences, well some possibilities.
Speaker 2 (01:15):
Right, there's no We came away from that episode with
the understanding that there is no proof that there's a
link between what we're going to talk about today and
that specific type of brain cancer.
Speaker 3 (01:27):
But right.
Speaker 2 (01:30):
It doesn't look good.
Speaker 3 (01:31):
Yeah, it's like playing It's like playing clue, you know,
in the board game Clue, where you have to have
three cards so you can name the person, the weapon,
and the place. Yeah, they are about two cards in here.
I would say two and a half. And that's just
being diplomatic.
Speaker 4 (01:46):
Two toes down perhaps, yeah, not ten toes.
Speaker 2 (01:50):
But what we found in the research, like the full
research for this episode, is that it goes way beyond baseball.
Speaker 3 (01:56):
Yes, the implications are far past the stadium. Here are
the facts. First, astro turf. It's a cool name. It
sounds a vaguely space related. But what is this stuff?
It might be interesting for a lot of us listening
today to learn that AstroTurf is a brand name. It
(02:16):
is one example of a thing that exists under multiple manufacturers. Right,
Astroturf's actually a proprietary eponym. We're talking about this a
little bit off air. We were naming a couple. Paul
shouted out popsicle from our brain Stuff days And what
is a proprietary eponym?
Speaker 4 (02:37):
Yeah, I mean it's basically it's a brand. Essentially, it's
the name of a product that ends up being so
ubiquitously known that it kind of becomes the stand in
for all other you know, sort of I guess you
could call them imitators. But it really does become sort
of a case of parallel thinking where the product is
so ubiquitous that probably it was almost invented simultaneous by
(03:00):
multiple parties, but the one with the name that stuck
is the one that kind of, you know, became the one,
and then everyone else is sort of refers to the
other ones by that same name, like xerox, for example,
which is just you know, photo copying, but it is
that people will to say, run a xerox of this,
or even google googling it.
Speaker 3 (03:21):
Google it.
Speaker 4 (03:21):
Or coke in some places just refers to a carbonated drink.
Speaker 2 (03:25):
You know, I need a band aid.
Speaker 3 (03:27):
Yeah, that's what. That's a great example. I will I
will see. I will share one example, an old war
story that Matt and Nola you guys have already heard.
Speaker 2 (03:38):
Uh.
Speaker 3 (03:39):
I first ran into proprietary eponyms while working on a
show called Stuff of Genius, a kids show about inventors.
Turns out, you, yeah, that's right. I forgot. Gosh, how
many shows have we worked on together, Matt?
Speaker 4 (03:53):
A lot, a.
Speaker 3 (03:54):
Lot, Yeah, so so Matt was doing the hard work
on stuff genius, and I was also there, and the
Tyler and Tyler Klaying Yes, Tyler Klayg a good friend
of the show who actually he's kind of a Jerry.
He doesn't appear on air that often. But yeah, so
(04:14):
I first at least learned about proprietary eponyms when I
learned that the makers of Frisbee are pretty litigious, a
lot less fun, a lot less fun than maybe the
image would imply. If it is not a Frisbee brand Frisbee,
it can only be called a flying disc and they
(04:35):
will find you.
Speaker 2 (04:36):
So.
Speaker 3 (04:37):
AstroTurf, then, is the most popular example the street name
for a product, a kind of product, a genre of
product that exists all over the Western world. It's weird
because we can get in the origin story of inventions.
It can be kind of tough to suss out who
(04:58):
made what because to your point, Oh, there's so much
parallel thinking that can occur. People like good inventors identify
a problem and then try to reverse engineer right work
back from the problem towards the solution. So it shouldn't
surprise us that there there are a couple of foggy
parts about the AstroTurf or synthetic turf origin story, but
(05:21):
we do know it was not originally named AstroTurf.
Speaker 2 (05:25):
No, it was called kim Grass. Kim Yum. That just
sounds great. Give me what I want to frolic on
some kim grass sounds.
Speaker 3 (05:36):
That was their original motto too, right, Matt kim Grass Yum.
Speaker 2 (05:41):
Yeah yeah, I think so.
Speaker 3 (05:46):
Yeah, So we got these, uh, we got these. One
story goes there are these two dudes, James im Faria
and Robert T. Wright. They worked out of a place
called kim chem strand chem Grass. Get it.
Speaker 2 (06:03):
Well, yeah, well it has to do with synthetic fibers, right,
and creating synthetic fibers became a big deal back in
the sixties.
Speaker 3 (06:14):
Oh yeah, oh my gosh, did so much for workouts,
and synthetics fibers still play a big role, I guess
in gym based internet selfies, right.
Speaker 2 (06:27):
Yeah, well, way more things than you could possibly imagine.
There are synthetic types of fibers that end up in
those products.
Speaker 3 (06:36):
And they're tremendously useful and versatile. The issue is that
they're also in the grand scheme of things, a very
new kind of endeavor for humans. Kim Strand may be
recognizable to some people. I don't know who. You're very
plugged in if you already knew this, because we didn't.
(06:59):
Kim Strand was a subsidiary of Monsanto, who is back.
Monsanto rides again in stuff they don't want you to know.
And they first put this stuff in a school in
Rhode Island back in the sixties. That was like their
test field.
Speaker 2 (07:16):
In nineteen sixty four.
Speaker 4 (07:18):
Yeah, and schools the ultimate cam testing fields.
Speaker 2 (07:24):
Yeah. Yeah. But then in nineteen sixty six that's when
it ended up in Texas where why we know it
as astro turf.
Speaker 3 (07:36):
Yeah, and want a shout out David Cheney, who is
also often mentioned as the inventor of AstroTurf. Some other
manufacturers cite him. There's a Sports Illustrated article about him.
They say that he's the guy responsible for creating this stuff.
The way they put it, is responsible for indoor Major
(07:58):
League Baseball. Millions of welcome Matt's origin story aside, Matt,
You're absolutely right. The big moment, the real debut comes
in Houston, Texas, nineteen sixty six at the Astrodome. The
Astrodome at the time is cutting edge it's like that.
It's like the beginning of that Simpson's monorail episode. Everybody
(08:20):
wants to have an astrodome. It's an indoor stadium, you
know what I mean. Finally humanity has Humanity has conquered
the gods of weather and said, we don't care what
the environment's like. We're gonna play till the ninth inning.
Speaker 2 (08:38):
Well, it's human engineering. It's beautiful human engineering at work. Right.
We need a way to have these baseball games, like
maybe in a pure way. It's pure baseball, right, you
don't got to worry about getting rained out, you don't
got to worry about super crazy hot days when you're
out there playing on the field. Let's do it indoors.
So like that's They solved a ton of problem by
(09:00):
putting a dome on top of the stadium, but then
it created more problems.
Speaker 4 (09:05):
Yeah, like these things often do well.
Speaker 2 (09:08):
And one of the major problems was they in order
to light that stadium right, like correctly, to get enough
light inside that dome, you had to have crazy strong
lights on the dome all over it.
Speaker 3 (09:21):
Yeah, and then they had to they actually had to
step some of that back and pint some of the
ceiling lighting area because the lights were too bright for
the players to see the balls coming down.
Speaker 2 (09:33):
And well, yeah, imagine the sun is one point of
light in the sky, right and it may not be
directly above you while you're playing. Sometimes it is, but
even then it's one point of light. Now you've got
like dozens.
Speaker 3 (09:46):
Now you're in the spotlight no matter where you look.
And they also had a problem with the grass. This
thing that I love that you point out the architecture
reminds me of my favorite architecture quote, which is, gosh,
I can't remember who said it, but someone once described
architecture's frozen poetry. Ooh yeah, And I think that's a
(10:08):
really beautiful way to think about it. And things like
the stadium, these massive marvels of human engineering. They really are.
There is poetry to them. But there's also a really
tough landscaping situation, which is nuts, but it makes sense
because they had such a hard time keeping the grass
(10:29):
growing and this enormous indoor cutting edge stadium that by
the second half of the nineteen sixty five baseball season
they literally said, Paul, beat me here. They said, get
We're just gonna have to paint the dead grass green
because we can't grow it. And of course, if you
have ever played baseball, you know the grass the field
(10:53):
itself is a big part of how you play. The
game's right of dreams apparently.
Speaker 2 (10:59):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (11:00):
And chemicals.
Speaker 3 (11:01):
Yeah, so they tried a new option. They tried several
different types of grass. None of it would take, so
they resurfaced the field with chem grass from your friends
at Kimstrand, the subsidiary of Monsanto Global chem Yeah, which
itself is probably a subsidiary of Illumination Global Unlimited. There's
(11:23):
a lot of questions still out there, right, So what
was kim grass?
Speaker 4 (11:29):
Well, kim grass is essentially a carpet of fake grass.
You can transport it to like these roles, you know.
So essentially it is a carpet of half inch thermoplastic
fibers that's attached to a rubber mat and then laid
on top of a base. In this case it would
be an asphalt base. Chemstrand was smart, you know, in
(11:52):
their branding play here when they thought of this as
an opportunity to rename it based on this new use.
Because you know, we have the team obviously that named
the Astros and the stadium and all of that, but
also Astro just has that kind of thing of the
future vibe, right, So they rename the stuff from the
(12:16):
maybe more accurate and possibly ill advised named Kemgrass to
Astro Turf.
Speaker 3 (12:21):
Get it.
Speaker 2 (12:23):
Well, yeah, it makes a ton of sense from a
branding perspective, right, from a marketing perspective, from a company
that's like, oh, this is kind of working, guys, I
think we could probably do this again like a lot.
Speaker 4 (12:35):
Let's create an association with a pre existing beloved brand.
Speaker 2 (12:39):
No, right, guys, this is a moment in like history history.
So in the news this thing. People are talking about
this in the New York Times. Oh wow, brand new,
brand new turf going in and it's a stuff of
the future. Everyone look at this Astro too, which.
Speaker 3 (12:55):
Is also I think, was it stuff from the future.
We we had another show, yeah, yeah, yeah yeah.
Speaker 2 (13:03):
Where by the way, Paul worked on stuff of genius.
I don't know if you guys, remember I.
Speaker 4 (13:09):
Have a video editor.
Speaker 3 (13:10):
Did I get some reputation for not acknowledging people's work.
Speaker 2 (13:13):
No, no, no, I just totally forget well.
Speaker 3 (13:16):
Shout out to Paul. Yes, Paul is an absolute mastermind.
And Paul's Paul's parents, many many people, many people's parents
in the show today, as well as some of our
fellow conspiracy realists listening now, may have been alive when
(13:36):
this news hit, and it was nationwide, it was syndicated,
It was a big deal. It was very Jetsons, it's
very futuristic. Also, it's a way better name than Keem Grass.
You know what were their other mottos. Their first one
was young and then their second one was kim Grass
to pay for the ground, like they needed the help
with an AstroTurf was there. It also looked like it's
(13:59):
saw so many problems. You're a stadium owner and you say, okay,
there's an upfront cost here, but over X amounts of years,
I won't have to pay for near as much maintenance. Right,
So this is a long term investment for me, and
I want my stadium to stay around as long as possible.
(14:20):
So it becomes incredibly common in indoor and outdoor stadiums
all through the seventies. It goes beyond the borders of
the US. It's in Canada, it's in Toronto, and well.
Speaker 2 (14:33):
Yeah, Major League Baseball really really bought into the stuff.
There were a ton of brand new stadiums that were
built with this this turf, artificial turf laid down there,
and it was again touted as, oh man, this is
a great new thing. We got.
Speaker 3 (14:48):
This is how the pros play, right. And as of
twenty twenty three, there are more than twelve thousand artificial
turf playing fields of some sort the United States, and
according to a trade group that we'll get into a
little bit later called the Synthetic Turf Council, more than
(15:09):
twelve hundred or so or installed every year in recent years,
definitely twenty thirteen, and the pattern seems to have continued
up until at least the pandemic. The idea for ask
Returf comes from a place called the Educational Facilities Laboratory
and nonprofit and they said, we want to help people learn.
(15:33):
We want to create and foster environments that set kids
up for success. And they've found a really interesting study
that showed if you're a military recruit in the fifties
and you come from a rural area, you will tend
to be more physically fit than recruits from urban areas
from big cities. And this is back before the majority
(15:54):
of humans lived in big cities, so it's a little
easier to study this. This this caused someone to urge
Monsanto to create a grass like surface that you could
lay down in city lots so kids have more places
to play. And you can see stuff like this in
playgrounds all across big cities, right Like, if you've ever
(16:15):
walked around New York, then you will see that kind
of green patch with the playground equipment and it's not
real grass, right, but it might be grass like. That's
what they were aiming for. They thought it was the
best thing. It's the turf for the future. A lot
of actual baseball players, because remember this started in Major
League Baseball. They didn't dig it. They were concerned.
Speaker 2 (16:41):
Yeah, well, one of the biggest problems is when you're
playing baseball, often you dive for things.
Speaker 3 (16:46):
You know.
Speaker 2 (16:47):
A lot of that is when you're sliding, you know,
if you're running around the bases doing stuff like that.
But if you're in the outfield, you know that you're
going to be diving for balls every once in a while.
And when you do something like that in your arm,
like you're let's say your elbow scratches along the grass
or something on the ground, you're gonna get cut up
(17:08):
a little bit. Right, It may not be crazy bad,
but you might get cut up a little bit, a
little bruising, but if you're on this artificial turf. The
baseball players started noticing that they were getting what was
akin to rugburn, like really really bad rugburn anytime they
would dive for anything.
Speaker 4 (17:25):
Well, I also have to ask, I mean, you know
any you know, any any league play type you know,
sport where yeah, you ultimately are like playing to get
into playoffs and then some sort of championship. You know,
is it consistency important, like in terms of like the
venues where you play, And couldn't having astro turf on
some stadiums and not others be considered either just kind
(17:49):
of like skewing the figures a little bit.
Speaker 3 (17:53):
Yeah, that's that could be a concern. And you know,
every uh, every every stadium seat umpire would raise that
and other variables to explain the outcome of a game,
especially if they're team lost. Sorry, folks, But the issue
for the players was not just the rashes, the rugburn,
(18:18):
the skids that these ballplayers are encountering. It's the fact
that they never healed. At least that's what we heard
from folks like former Astros outfielder Bob Watson. Turns out
Bob may have been pretty prescient. This stuff was spreading
to football stadiums as well. By nineteen eighty four, seventeen
(18:40):
out of twenty eight NFL teams we're playing on artificial turf.
And to your point, Nol about the importance of having
a uniform field of play wherever you go, there's a
pretty good argument you can make at this time where
you say, Okay, now we're equalizing things. We need to
make this turf ubiquitous. It needs to be the stand
(19:00):
very convenient for the Globochems of the world.
Speaker 4 (19:04):
Oh yeah, a bit of a pain in the butt
for Major League Baseball and anyone that's responsible for retrofitting
all of these stadiums.
Speaker 3 (19:12):
I'm picturing. I'm picturing right now. I'm picturing the the
AstroTurf folks making handshake deals and leaning in and saying
Kim Grass the way that people said Hail Hydras exactly
in those Marvel movies.
Speaker 4 (19:27):
Yeah, y'all, not to act like I'm oh, poor major
League Baseball, but I mean, you know, anytime you have
like a sea change like this where a new anything
comes up and it becomes sort of the order of
the day. So there are people who have to kind
of kick into gear and figure out how to make
the change without disrupting their season.
Speaker 2 (19:46):
Well, yeah, but guys, I think the biggest thing here's
where you're talking about the handshake deal whispering in about
Kim Grass there, because we learned pretty recently. Gosh, I
guess it was a while ago now, but when the
Braves got a new stadium in a different part of Atlanta,
you guys remember this, or I guess not even really
Atlanta in com County, And just how huge of a deal,
(20:08):
how much money was to be made when a new
stadium was being built. And in this time, just before
AstroTurf starts making its way into other major leagues, there
are a ton of brand new fields that are constructed
with specifically chemgrass as one of the major selling points.
Speaker 3 (20:29):
Right. Yeah, now, it's a feature, you know, like you're
buying a car. You could pony up a little extra
and get the airbags or the power of steering, the
seat belt and so on. Yes, if seat belts gave
you cancer.
Speaker 2 (20:45):
Or hey, the tires, you can get the tower.
Speaker 3 (20:48):
Go oh god, yeah, we'll get to it.
Speaker 4 (20:50):
I was annoyed to find when I bought my certified
pre owned Honda Fit that it did not come with
floor mats.
Speaker 3 (20:58):
I know what later, what are you? What are you
a billionaire? You're buying cars with floor mats? Chassa over here. Uh,
I've been going through a thing where I referenced Monssa.
Speaker 4 (21:12):
I don't know who is, but I imagine it's a big
wig of some For a long time, the the most
wealthy dude in history went on a tour on the
African continent back in the day and broke the economies
of every place he went to, just because he rolled with.
Speaker 3 (21:32):
That much gold. Uh maybe a ridiculous history episode.
Speaker 2 (21:37):
Yeah, floor mats equals mansa musa.
Speaker 3 (21:40):
Yeah, all these fancy these floormat tycoons also artificial turf
floor mats. Probably don't buy them. You'll see why. But
but that is weird just to say on that for
a second though, Like they no floor mats.
Speaker 4 (21:56):
Well, he didn't tell me either.
Speaker 3 (21:57):
I had.
Speaker 4 (21:58):
I got the car and then I looked in there
and I was just like paper on the floor and
there's no floor mats. And I called him, and the
guy acted like I was asking the most ridiculous question.
I was like, what do.
Speaker 3 (22:06):
Formats are of the car?
Speaker 2 (22:08):
Yeah?
Speaker 4 (22:09):
He said that actually, and uh and then yeah, I
just ended up buying some kind of aftermarket ones or whatever.
Floormats aren't like crazy expensive. I'm sorry at the end
of ramp, they're not crazy expensive. But yeah, you think
that would be stock.
Speaker 3 (22:23):
I do a double system. I get the kind of
the shell floormat and then the fabric one on top
of that. It's just easier to clean, ask no one.
So anyhow, the uh, we'll talk about layers in a minute.
That's that's kind of a segway anyway. So the NFL
players also share the concerns of the baseball players when
(22:45):
it comes to AstroTurf. They say, this surface is harder,
We're getting more strains, we're getting more abrass than we
did playing just on natural grass. And they also, this
is interesting. I didn't see a ton of this popping
up a lot. I don't know if you guys saw it,
but there were complaints that abrasions from artificial turf also
(23:08):
led to staff infections.
Speaker 2 (23:10):
H yeah, I remember reading that in the Science History
Institute article you shared Ben that. Yeah, I think that's
that's a common thing, like, because they don't heal very
quickly for one reason or another, the infection can set in.
Speaker 3 (23:27):
Yeah, and it already feels a little creepy too, right
that the idea that a braiding your skin on this
surface will take longer to heal than if it were
abraided on grass. It's just weird. This didn't phase the
AstroTurf crew nor the other manufacturers entering the market. Were
millions of dollars, millions acres acres of turf, and they
(23:52):
were doing this by expanding past the major leaks, past
the NFL. They were going to minor leaks. We're going
to cope even high school teams, right, and with great
success because they had this beautiful marketing, you know, play
like the big boys essentially.
Speaker 2 (24:08):
Well, I think about it again. We talked about this before,
but the number of Major League Baseball stadiums in this
country is very tiny. The numbers NFL teams like twenty
eight or something, I don't even know, thirty That that's
just you can make your money that many times if
you stay there in the big time, but if you
move out to the small time. Every county in the
(24:30):
country has multiple high schools, right, oh yeah.
Speaker 4 (24:36):
And if that's entially like farm teams and stuff too,
you know, or like you know, minor league and.
Speaker 3 (24:40):
All of that, right, minor leagues are a big thing.
That The the cool thing about this business model too,
if we're being just a bit soulless, is that if
everything goes right, they're going to keep building more schools. Yeah,
and what are those schools need? They need more places
to play, so kaching players are complaining. And over time
(25:02):
baseball stadiums, we know, the major ones start converting back
to natural surfaces. New varieties and strains of grass come out,
and this enables you know, this enables more hardy plants matter.
And if you go to the nineteen nineties, you'll see
that the synthetic turf manufacturers introduce what they call a
(25:27):
new generation of turf, a new and improved formula, and
they say this will be safer, softer, more comfortable.
Speaker 2 (25:36):
And we'll tell you all about what those changes were
and what they meant for everybody's health. Right after a
word from our sponsors and we're back.
Speaker 4 (25:51):
So we sort of teased before the break that there
was a change in this synthetic turf that supposedly would
create a safer and more comfortable playing surface. This is
in the nineties, so what kind of changes are we
talking about. Obviously the goal here is to imitate grass
as much as possible, you know, in terms of the
(26:12):
feel and the length of the fibers or the material
or whatever. But we know, as we mentioned earlier, that
this was causing some kind of nasty injuries. You know,
when folks were skidding around, they were basically getting like
turf rash. So in order to mitigate that, I think,
if I'm not mistaken, guys, the idea was to lengthen
these grass fibers a bit. That could perhaps cause a
(26:34):
little more cushioning, create a little bit more of a
soft landing.
Speaker 2 (26:38):
Well, yeah, they'll bend a little more when your elbows
and knees and everything land on them.
Speaker 3 (26:43):
Yeah. And they also one of the big improvements was
what's called the infill. You can get a good picture
of this if you go to the Synthetic Turf Council.
But of course be aware that they have a horse
in the race, right they have a team there rooting for.
Speaker 2 (27:02):
Them. We went on their website, looked at all the companies.
Oh yeah, yeh.
Speaker 3 (27:09):
Get ready for that one. What you need to know
now is that the infill, the stuff that provides a
lot of this cushioning when they came out with these improvements,
it consisted of something called crumb rubber like cake crumb
with a b rubber from used tires specifically that gets
(27:30):
ground up into particles that are usually about just one
millimeter across, and then they get mixed up with sand.
And this was at the time a very cool solution
to another problem. People had piles and piles and piles
of tires and they didn't know what to do with them,
(27:51):
you know what I mean. They they knew they wouldn't
decompose very easily, and they were in open air dump
They became condos for rats and vermin, mosquitoes, roaches, and
if the weather conditions were right or wrong, then these
piles of tires would catch on fire.
Speaker 2 (28:11):
I am just I love this episode, guys, because it
really is human ingenuity and engineering at play, all intertwining.
Just the idea of how important tires are to the
growth of the United States of America, right, and Ben,
I know you know a ton about that with car stuff,
but like just how important building creating something that could
(28:36):
get all of the cars around on these brand new
interstates we had built at one time.
Speaker 3 (28:44):
For Henry Ford even built his own town right out
in Brazil just to make tires and a bursty humility.
He called it Fordlandia. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (28:54):
But then at some point those tires go back and
there are you know, some companies who special in getting
a tire back ready to go on the road, but
mostly those tires end up in a landfill mm hmm.
Speaker 3 (29:07):
Yeah. And those dumps are also they're you know, they're
not completely cut off from the environment obviously, so rain
water falls on these tires and that helps chemicals from
the tires leach into the ground. Everybody's saying these tires
are a problems. So if you are an inventor and
you come forward and you say, hey, I've got a
(29:29):
great way to use these, you know, you can forget
about the rat condos and those constant tire fires. Well,
let's play baseball. Then it sounds like a win win, right.
Speaker 2 (29:40):
Yeah. The mosquitoes for me, it's really the mosquitos.
Speaker 3 (29:43):
Is the mosquitoes for you, and just taking like, think
about how many tires they're using too. One one industry
estimate we saw said that covering a NFL regulation football
field with synthetic turf using is the equivalent of twenty
thousand to forty thousand tires, which is a great way
(30:07):
to clean your landfill.
Speaker 2 (30:09):
I mean, that's awesome, but I don't I never saw
the statistics for the number of tires scrap tires that
end up in landfills every year. I know it's a ton, right,
it's a problem. Yeah, twenty to forty thousand, that's definitely
making a dent. But is it just a dent?
Speaker 4 (30:27):
When you get new tires, you know, and oftentimes the
auto shop or whatever, they'll for a fee dispose of
your tires for you, sort of more of an out
of sight, out of mind convenience. But it isn't really
like they're just vanishing these tires in a puff of smoke.
I mean, they're just going to one of these same places, right.
Speaker 2 (30:45):
They'll yeah, ship them to another country sometimes.
Speaker 3 (30:48):
Probably exactly, Yeah, and they'll they'll just it's a like
a nimby fee you pay quite literally so that those
tires are not in your backyard the tire manufacturer. Here's
the tricky part. Tires are definitely not garden variety rubber
like you would get from plant source. They contain a
(31:11):
lot of chemicals that make them reliable on the road,
stuff like oh, here we go, polysicilic aromatic hydrocarbons that
makes it stronger, makes it more durable. But then they
also treat it with zinc oxide. Zinc oxide can have lead,
it can have cabmium, which is also bad. This stuff
(31:32):
makes the tire more elastic, it makes it last longer,
but the entire entire time it is emitting those chemicals
or things generated by those substances. So in two thousand
and nine, the EPA says, all right, all right, we've
heard the people. We're gonna we're gonna check out synthetic
(31:55):
turf in these sports fields and by this point in
the two thousands it's on playgrounds too, and we're going
to see if any of these particulates, any of these
weird metals or chemicals or what are called volatile organic
compounds aka new car smell stuff. We're going to see
if that is dangerous to the people playing there. And surprise,
(32:18):
the EPA said, nah, all good.
Speaker 2 (32:22):
Yeah, of course they did. Of course they did. Uh
we kind of I don't want to. I don't want
to glide over this fact too much. It is these
turfs are being used in playgrounds, in playgrounds at schools,
and playgrounds in public parks, all kinds of places. And
you know, if there's potentially a problem, we got a
(32:42):
serious problem. Because it's not only affecting professional you know,
baseball players, football players, high school football players and baseball
players and soccer players. It's affecting little kids who are
just out there innocently playing on a playground.
Speaker 3 (32:58):
And you could argue all all the people involved or innocent, no.
Speaker 2 (33:02):
One else, No, no baseball player, no Major League baseball
players innocent. I'm just sure no. But I guess what
I mean from a public concern standpoint, right, that ups
the ante when kids are now involved.
Speaker 3 (33:17):
Understood, Yeah, and agreed. And today only five professional baseball
teams still use synthetic fields. But just because the things
gone doesn't mean the effects or consequences of it have vanished.
Just last month, as we record, a report came out
via the Philadelphia Enquirer alleging that six former Philadelphia Phillies
(33:39):
may have died from exposure to this stuff. Here's where
it gets crazy. It appears to be true. Again, we
were very careful in the beginning to say, like, we
don't have all of the clue pieces, right. We know
a place, we know a possible weapon, and we know
(34:00):
a possible victim or perpetrator, but we don't have it
all connected. Yet We're still like a card short.
Speaker 2 (34:07):
What did the we know a place where glioblastoma exists? Sorry,
oh god, nailed it?
Speaker 3 (34:14):
Okay, Well, yeah, let's talk about that. What's what's the scoop?
What did Philly tell us? So?
Speaker 4 (34:20):
The Philadelphia Inquirer reported that these six athletes, all of
whom we talked about this in the Strange News segment,
died from a very rare brain cancer called glioblastoma. Had
played most of their careers with the Phillies, which the
team that competed on artificial turf in Veteran stadium for decades.
(34:45):
Former EPA scientist named Kyla Bennett, who is now with
the Public Employees of Environmental Responsibility nonprofit, have this to
say about the whole the whole situation. There is a
high number of Philadelphia Phillies diagnosed with this rare cancer,
and it looks weird, so that should be a red flag.
(35:05):
We don't know what those chemicals are doing to us.
What happened to exercising caution when we're talking about human health.
This is a very good question, you know, I mean,
and something that we've talked about many times where something like,
for example, asbestos. You know, at one time it was
promoted as being this magical future material that was you know,
(35:26):
going to be everything should be built out of this stuff,
and then of course they are off to the races
installing it and everywhere from schools to hospitals, you know,
you name it. Only too fine, through subsequent research and
advances in technology and you know, analysis that this stuff
is just deadly. I mean, it does seem like we
(35:47):
are very you know, hot for the next new thing
and the next new whatever that thing might be, sometimes
to the point of you know, hedging our bets and saying, oh,
it's fine, we done our due diligence. But then that
due diligence changes and the scope of it changes over
time as new methods become available for checking into this stuff.
(36:10):
Not to mention when you start to see red flags
like these cases we're seeing here.
Speaker 2 (36:13):
Well, and remember the connection between the artificial turf and
those rare cancers at this point when we're you know,
when we're when it's being looked into. Even then when
the Philadelphia Inquirers read is talking about it and writing
about it, it is just a connection, right. It's like, oh,
here's one commonality between these six baseball players that got
(36:36):
this rare cancer. But that's apparently not when the concern
began when it comes to baseball players being affected potentially
by that artificial turf.
Speaker 1 (36:48):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (36:49):
Yeah. And for her part too, Kyla Bennett is a
subject matter expert and is not doing some kind of
polemical like hot take. Genuinely say it looks weird. It
should be a red flag. Yeah. I think that's pretty understandable, right,
And like you were saying, Matt, this is I don't
(37:10):
know about guys. I was surprised to find that concerns
date back so far. It goes beyond players saying like, hey,
I don't care for this from my personal experience. In
twenty seventeen, New York Times published an article about this
very thing, and Matt, you want to hit them with
the headline.
Speaker 2 (37:30):
Yeah, sure, The New York Times says the brain cancer
that keeps killing baseball players.
Speaker 3 (37:37):
Oof, not pulling a lot of punches there. Yeah in
the big Apple. Okay, well this.
Speaker 2 (37:43):
Really is rare. Well you know it's rare to be
an MLB player. Well yeah, you know, this brain cancer
is really rare. Though.
Speaker 3 (37:50):
I like that you're adding that layer too, because now
we're seeing an increased selection, right, So we should note
that in these studies and reports all the stuff we've found,
multiple experts on brain cancer, like neurooncologists and so on,
take a lot of pains to say there's not a
(38:11):
one hundred percent confirmed causation. And they're they're doing that
because they're doctors, they're experts. They don't want to say
something is confirmed unless they're one hundred percent sure. So
we can we can note that. But while we're noting
that entirely to be fair, that's from the experts, we
(38:32):
also have to note gleo blastoma is incredibly rare. It's
it's it's not like it's not like diabetes or something
or some other widespread condition.
Speaker 4 (38:47):
No, And it's something we've talked about in the past too,
with these kinds of class action lawsuits, you know, even
about you know, the Dark Waters scenario, you know, with
the stuff that's on the nonstick pans. It is difficult
to proof unequivocally that any of these kinds of substances
are one hundred percent responsible for someone's cancer because there
(39:09):
are so many other factors to take into consideration.
Speaker 3 (39:13):
You know, yes, but discloblastoma stuff, it has an incidents
or a frequency rate of only three point two one
per one hundred thousand people.
Speaker 4 (39:24):
Like, so, is does that help the case or hurt
the case? I think it helps. It helps the case, yes, exactly,
because you know, if it was a more general cancer
that was more widely contracted, that would be more of
a needle in the haystack kind of situation. Because this
is such a narrowed focus, you know, in terms of
like what the what the fallout might have been, you know,
(39:45):
the consequences. Rather then it's a little easier to suggest causation.
Speaker 3 (39:51):
Right, yeah, yeah, just so, Like I mean, it'd be
different if everybody was dying of some disease called like
baseball at hand, you know what I mean, Like that
would be kind of easy trace. But here you can
see there's a lot of coincidence. Right. As a matter
of fact, I think we're being quite diplomatic and deferring
(40:13):
to the experts when we say this is not one
hundred percent proven, but the stuff we're getting into next
will probably affect the way you think about playgrounds in
your neighborhood.
Speaker 2 (40:25):
Oh for sure. I just want to make the point
I this is an estimate, but there are around twelve
one hundred Major League Baseball players at any given time. Okay,
twelve hundred. How many people live in the United States.
Speaker 3 (40:40):
Guys, more than year and thirty million. Yeah, hmmm, very
small sample set, right, And that group of twelve hundred people,
they do a lot of the same stuff. They do
some things that normal people don't do because of their job, right,
Like who's who's most likely to have a space related injury? Astronauts?
(41:05):
You know what I mean. That's like who's most likely
to encounter the dangerous effects of synthetic turf? The people
who are around it the most often, you know. And
so all of this turf, this is the part where
we have to introduce another recurring villain on the show.
All of this turf is made with pfas per and
(41:28):
polyfloral aalkal substances, forever chemicals, forever chemicals.
Speaker 2 (41:35):
SHY twelve or fourteen.
Speaker 3 (41:38):
Diamond why by a diamond, get her something that'll last.
Get her pfas exactly I'm getting. She already has it.
Speaker 2 (41:47):
It's already just like yours.
Speaker 3 (41:51):
Uh yeah. Some of these turfs are still made with
recycled tires, which means they contain all all the nasty
stuff that is bad for you but great for a
long lasting tire. And as a result of growing number
communities and even states in the US have banned these
specific types of turf or said hey, we should think
(42:13):
about banning these, and even the testing of multiple artificial fields,
the newer ones, the older ones, across the board, they
found that they're still a pretty high and dangerous presence
of pfas compounds, no matter which one you look into
and shout out to the Enquirer again over in Philly.
Speaker 2 (42:35):
And just one thing I want to point out here.
We talked about how the EPA in two thousand and
nine took a look at this artificial turf and said, hey, guys,
all those concentrations of those things you're worried about, they're
way below what we would call levels of concern, so
we're good to go on the turf. There was a
(42:55):
watchdog nonprofit called Public employees for environmental responsibility, And right
after the EPA released those findings in two thousand and nine,
they said, hey, guys, you haven't thought about the temperature.
Speaker 4 (43:08):
It's a good point. I mean, listen, look, we let's
just say that. We don't want to besmirch the good
name of the EPA, but it does seem like sometimes
these these allowable levels, these tolerances that end up becoming
codified by them, are just convenient enough for big business.
(43:29):
Just putting that out there.
Speaker 3 (43:31):
Yeah, yeah, like, hey, we can't keep all the rat
poop out of cereal? What's a reasonable amount? That's still
one of my favorite things. And this is, you know,
again not to denigrate the EPA. The individuals working there
are brilliant people who are doing their best. We're talking
about a systemic problem with corruption in the EPA, that's right.
Speaker 4 (43:52):
Yeah, the ones that are the regulators that are actually
you know, the researchers, the regulators, the folks that are
working there day to day, not the folks that were
thumbing our noses at a little bit. It's the higher ups.
It's the folks that like create past the laws that
ultimately kind of stemy the EPA from actually doing important work.
Speaker 2 (44:11):
Yeah, but guys, I'm so sorry to just keep going
back at this, but the the artificial turf testing the
EPA did was so underwhelming. Let's say, because we're talking
about these forever chemicals that exist in these grasses right
in these fibers, and then you've got the sun that's
beating down on them all day if you're not inside
(44:31):
an astrodome, and when that sun hits these artificial chemicals,
gets surface temperatures of up to one hundred and fifty
degrees fahrenheit, which means you've got plastics and these carbons
that are just getting superheated.
Speaker 4 (44:49):
Being released right into the air. I would imagine, well, yeah.
Speaker 2 (44:53):
And then you've got players running around on them with cleats.
Speaker 4 (44:56):
Nothing's gonna diving, right, Yeah, So they're they're they're roughing
them up with their cleats. They're already in a state
of kind of heated, you know, let's just say they're
being almost what's the word I'm looking for activated, right,
and then they're getting roughed up with these cleats. People
are diving into them face first. I'm sure this stuff
(45:18):
has I mean, even just the layman like us would
be like what's the deal with that? Why aren't they
testing for these situations?
Speaker 3 (45:25):
Yeah, and add to that, the EPA recently revised its
health advisory for at least one of these things, PFOS
per fluorooctane sulfonic acid, and they said, huh okay, we
looked back into it, and no level of exposure to
this stuff is safe, at least in drinking water. Zero
(45:48):
percent is good. And one of the reasons we keep
shouting out the Inquirer over in Philly is because they
obtained pieces of the Phillies artificial turf and they took
it to not one, but two labs and found it
contained sixteen types of pfas or pfas, including the stuff
(46:09):
that the EPA said should absolutely not be around.
Speaker 4 (46:13):
Am I the only one that when we talk about
PFA is I think of pf Chang's just putting that
out there.
Speaker 3 (46:19):
I think, Okay, well, was it close to lunchtime, as
let's take a you know what, let's take a snack break,
snack with us. Folks will be right back and get
into probably the most disturbing part of this tale. We've returned.
(46:45):
So this is a bit like forensic work. Again. We
can't prove exposure cause these cancers, but we can place
the victims in direct, repeated contact with substances that are
proven to cause these conditions. Pfas bad news. Corporations spend
a lot of time and effort matrix dodging this issue
(47:07):
in the past and in the present day. These forever chemicals,
they don't break down. They're around, and they cannot wait
to help you get cancer, birth defects, liver problems, kidney disease.
They're waiting for you, and they get inside you pretty easily.
It's not vampire rules. You don't have to invite them in.
(47:30):
They can be inhaled, ingested. They can be absorbed through
the skin, especially through a scrape or an open wound,
say on a baseball field or a soccer field, or
to playgrounds.
Speaker 2 (47:44):
Dude, did you see the NBC reporting from twenty fourteen
about artificial turf and soccer players, specifically goalies who were constantly,
you know, jumping right and landing on the ground as
they're attempting to stop balls from getting in the goal.
The oh my god, you guys. So many young female
(48:06):
players ended up getting types of leukemia, types of cancers,
and there were so many goalies. You got to check
out the reporting out of NBC from twenty fourteen if
you haven't read that yet, it's called how safe is
the artificial turf your child plays on?
Speaker 3 (48:22):
Yeah, and again these headlines are speaking volumes. Right. The
Phillies played on this turf between nineteen seventy one to
two thousand and three. The six people who died died
in their forties or their fifties. Additionally, globlastoma. The median
age for that is sixty four, so they're dying at
(48:45):
about three times the rate of the adult male general population.
Medical experts will acknowledge the pieces are all there, but
they stopped short of a full confirmation. They say, you know,
and this is fair. They say. Other factors may have played.
Lifestyle choices, right, temperature, concussions, things like that. But long
(49:06):
story short, doesn't look good, doesn't stop in Philly is
super popular for a long time. There needs to be
a lot more research. Recommendations include things like hiring epidemiologists,
let's get some statisticians in there, or maybe, hey, we
should start a registry of players along with their causes
of death. And the fact that there's not something like
(49:28):
that already is pretty weird. It reminds me of the
time we learned that the FBI just doesn't bother keeping
a list of people who disappear in national parks.
Speaker 4 (49:37):
I have a question. We talked about this briefly, I
think on the Strange News segment, But like, you know,
when someone dies of lung cancer and they were a smoker,
they can you know, the determination could be made that
smoking may have been a contributing factor, but you can't
exactly say, yes, smoking is definitely what killed this person.
Speaker 3 (50:00):
It would be tough. It would be tough because that person,
unless they were in a controlled environment for the entirety
of their life, they would inevitably run into other things
that could be carcinogetic at some point, especially in the US,
if they drove a.
Speaker 2 (50:15):
Car outside him.
Speaker 4 (50:17):
Well, and again, like we we have this research, but
we don't know exactly how much exposure is too much?
Is one time too much?
Speaker 3 (50:26):
You know?
Speaker 4 (50:27):
Is it ten times? Is it one season, one year
of relatively regular exposure. They don't have those answers. Nobody does,
to my understanding, at least, I just wanted to see
if that's how y'all saw it as well.
Speaker 3 (50:41):
Well. I am curious there might be a group that
low key does have the answers. We have to talk
about the implications hashtag. No, Dennis Reynolds didn't always going
to show up so much of the show, but hashtag
not that kind of implication. So the turf was made
from old tires solve a pre existing problem the tires
from one place to another, doesn't solve the original problem
(51:03):
with the tires. It just sort of kicks it into
another neighborhood. And we found a group that we wanted
to talk about a little bit today called the Synthetic
Turf Council. They are the biggest trade group representing AstroTurf,
synthetic turf in general. And there is a lobbyists, right yeah,
or trade association, industry group, whatever phrase you want to
(51:26):
hang it on.
Speaker 2 (51:27):
They're they're advocates.
Speaker 3 (51:29):
They're the turf Gang, the turf Boys.
Speaker 4 (51:31):
Yeah, turf Gang. I like that.
Speaker 3 (51:33):
So Turf Gang is in this intense rivalry between proponents
of natural grass and these applications, and you you can
go to their website right now, we got under the hood.
I'm very curious. I want to be fully transparent here.
I'm very curious what they're members only information is because
(51:56):
they have a free public facing side of the site,
and then for like a little less than one hundred bucks,
they'll give you the you know, they'll give you the
fresh fresh scoop.
Speaker 2 (52:05):
I'm going I'm molling, let's go. Yeah, I might hang
out with Larry Ridgeway the VC over there. What's up?
What's up, Larry, We're gonna hang on your members only area.
Speaker 4 (52:21):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (52:22):
Do they have a Patreon anyway? So the STC Synthetic
Turf Council has a lot of information on their public
side of the site. You can see cool cross sections
of how modern synthetic turf is made. You can read
reports about their their teams answering basic questions. You can
find a couple of statistics, but you won't find on
(52:45):
the public side of the site much research about the
possible health dangers of astro turf.
Speaker 2 (52:50):
No, it's not in their interest to talk about any
of that stuff.
Speaker 4 (52:54):
In their purview, we're here to to flag wave and
then we're the boosters for this stuff. Let's he no
attention to all of that data.
Speaker 2 (53:02):
Well, but but look like really on the surface, the
synthetic surface, guys like that person Larry that I mentioned,
And Larry, I'm sorry for calling you out. You're just
your face and name is on the front of the
about page.
Speaker 3 (53:16):
I thought you were going to say your face and
name offend me.
Speaker 2 (53:18):
No, not at all. I'm sure Larry's an awesome person.
It's just Larry is the president and CEO of a
couple of companies. One is called Precision Jet, one's called
turf Bond. Precision Jet started back in two thousand and one,
and what they do is they create the graphics that
go on top of synthetic fields. Right, so if you've
(53:40):
got a football team or whatever, they'll they'll get that
going for you. Yeah, and they develop technology back in
two thousand and one to do this kind of stuff
and to make precision cutting. I believe they use I
think it's water and like sand or something that he
uses us. No, but he also works with turf Bond,
which is the big artificial turf adhesive that exists out there.
(54:03):
And why would you know a group that runs companies
like that that are all based on the business of
artificial turf Ever want anybody to hear about the potentially
bad things that this stuff can cause.
Speaker 3 (54:18):
Yeah, another way to think about it. You go to
like you go to like the Domino's Pizza website, You're
not going to see a warning right on the front
page of the website about how too much pizza is bad.
Speaker 2 (54:34):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (54:34):
Man, you know they're not gonna pump your brakes once
you got to the website and.
Speaker 2 (54:39):
Nobody out pizza is the hut? I mean, come on, well, true.
Speaker 3 (54:43):
Little Caesars has entered the chat. They're making crazy bread.
Oh my god.
Speaker 4 (54:49):
All right, so no worried was always worth it?
Speaker 3 (54:53):
Always Okay, well maybe this will be worth it. We
know we're going a little long today, but we wanted
to bring this story to bear one to give it
more attention. Again, not one hundred percent proven, but there's
one last part that stuck with me, and I think
it stuck with all of us, and probably stuck with
some of us listening along at home with all the
(55:15):
news about cancer coming from artificial turf that was made
from reused and scrapped tires. What should we think about
the tires currently in use, the tires on your car,
the tires on your bike, the tires on the countless
vehicles rolling all across your community today. Just like a
baseball player sliding on turf. Those tires are sliding on asphalt, right.
Speaker 2 (55:38):
Yeah, didn't we do? Oh man, there's something pinging here, Ben.
We talked about a new type of tire that was
completely different. It was not based on rubber like that.
It was I think it was stuff for genius. Maybe
it was stuff of the future, but it was a
tire that just I've got an image in my mind.
Speaker 3 (56:00):
It's like a po's like segmented.
Speaker 2 (56:02):
Yes, and it wasn't made of the same substances.
Speaker 3 (56:05):
There are a couple of different things like that. Segment
and tires would be one. I guess we could all
get tank tracks on our vehicles, right and just be
prepared to go a little slower. But how do you
change that whole industry? Well as something you would mentioned too, like.
Speaker 4 (56:21):
How well tires are made of what petroleum? You know?
I mean, it's all part of the same supply chain,
that legacy supply chain that it does not behoove you know,
the old guard to support changing.
Speaker 3 (56:35):
It's not even an old guard question. What I'm getting
as the entirety of like you're right about the petroleum,
the enormity of change, the costs that would have to
occur ripping up all the artificial turf all across the
United States. Even if it's a thing that should be done,
it's going to be difficult to do it. And it's
(56:56):
not if this exposure stuff is true, it's not going
to undo the consequences from the past decades. It's just
gonna hopefully prevent further consequences. I don't know, and you know,
it's not like turf is the only origin point of
this stuff, but it makes you think. I'm here in
tires outside of where I record right now, I'm gonna
(57:19):
take a walk after this. I got to go get
some lunch.
Speaker 4 (57:22):
I don't know, man, you go to PF Changs.
Speaker 3 (57:25):
I don't know. But now we don't have a PF change.
It's convenient, guys, lucky you.
Speaker 4 (57:34):
We can go to the airport.
Speaker 3 (57:35):
We can go to the airport that the.
Speaker 4 (57:37):
PF changs at the airport serves breakfast. That's like a
non PF Chang thing, you know what I mean.
Speaker 3 (57:43):
That's just for you, Heartsfeld, and we want to end
this episode asking how far does this go? Folks would
love to hear your take on the issue, the implications,
and we'd love to hear other examples of seemingly innocuous
things with a dangerous, potentially fatal dark side, Or have
you found research that totally disproves these concerns about turf? Honestly,
(58:07):
if that's the case, would love to read it. Make
I think everybody feel a little bit better.
Speaker 4 (58:12):
Yeah, you can send it to us and through several
means on the internet. You can find us at Conspiracy
Stuff on Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube, Conspiracy Stuff show on
Instagram and TikTok.
Speaker 2 (58:27):
Hey, do you like to call people and talk to
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Leave a message. You've got three minutes. Please give yourself
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got more to say than can fit in that three minutes,
(58:47):
why not instead send us a good old fashioned email.
Speaker 3 (58:51):
We are conspiracy at iHeartRadio dot com.
Speaker 2 (59:12):
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Speaker 2 (00:24):
Hello, welcome back to the show. My name is Matt,
my name is Nol.
Speaker 3 (00:28):
They call me Ben. We're joined as always with our
super producer Paul. Mission control decands. Most importantly, you are
you are here, and that makes this the stuff they
don't want you to know. Weirdly enough, this episode is
very baseball centric at the beginning. But look, if you
(00:48):
don't love baseball, if you're not a baseball nut like
our pal Max Williams, never fear. Don't let that dissuade you. Because,
fellow conspiracy realists, you may recall in an earlier part
of our weekly Strange News segment, Matt, you brought a
pretty disturbing story about some revelations related to baseball and
(01:11):
long term health consequences, well some possibilities.
Speaker 2 (01:15):
Right, there's no We came away from that episode with
the understanding that there is no proof that there's a
link between what we're going to talk about today and
that specific type of brain cancer.
Speaker 3 (01:27):
But right.
Speaker 2 (01:30):
It doesn't look good.
Speaker 3 (01:31):
Yeah, it's like playing It's like playing clue, you know,
in the board game Clue, where you have to have
three cards so you can name the person, the weapon,
and the place. Yeah, they are about two cards in here.
I would say two and a half. And that's just
being diplomatic.
Speaker 4 (01:46):
Two toes down perhaps, yeah, not ten toes.
Speaker 2 (01:50):
But what we found in the research, like the full
research for this episode, is that it goes way beyond baseball.
Speaker 3 (01:56):
Yes, the implications are far past the stadium. Here are
the facts. First, astro turf. It's a cool name. It
sounds a vaguely space related. But what is this stuff?
It might be interesting for a lot of us listening
today to learn that AstroTurf is a brand name. It
(02:16):
is one example of a thing that exists under multiple manufacturers. Right,
Astroturf's actually a proprietary eponym. We're talking about this a
little bit off air. We were naming a couple. Paul
shouted out popsicle from our brain Stuff days And what
is a proprietary eponym?
Speaker 4 (02:37):
Yeah, I mean it's basically it's a brand. Essentially, it's
the name of a product that ends up being so
ubiquitously known that it kind of becomes the stand in
for all other you know, sort of I guess you
could call them imitators. But it really does become sort
of a case of parallel thinking where the product is
so ubiquitous that probably it was almost invented simultaneous by
(03:00):
multiple parties, but the one with the name that stuck
is the one that kind of, you know, became the one,
and then everyone else is sort of refers to the
other ones by that same name, like xerox, for example,
which is just you know, photo copying, but it is
that people will to say, run a xerox of this,
or even google googling it.
Speaker 3 (03:21):
Google it.
Speaker 4 (03:21):
Or coke in some places just refers to a carbonated drink.
Speaker 2 (03:25):
You know, I need a band aid.
Speaker 3 (03:27):
Yeah, that's what. That's a great example. I will I
will see. I will share one example, an old war
story that Matt and Nola you guys have already heard.
Speaker 2 (03:38):
Uh.
Speaker 3 (03:39):
I first ran into proprietary eponyms while working on a
show called Stuff of Genius, a kids show about inventors.
Turns out, you, yeah, that's right. I forgot. Gosh, how
many shows have we worked on together, Matt?
Speaker 4 (03:53):
A lot, a.
Speaker 3 (03:54):
Lot, Yeah, so so Matt was doing the hard work
on stuff genius, and I was also there, and the
Tyler and Tyler Klaying Yes, Tyler Klayg a good friend
of the show who actually he's kind of a Jerry.
He doesn't appear on air that often. But yeah, so
(04:14):
I first at least learned about proprietary eponyms when I
learned that the makers of Frisbee are pretty litigious, a
lot less fun, a lot less fun than maybe the
image would imply. If it is not a Frisbee brand Frisbee,
it can only be called a flying disc and they
(04:35):
will find you.
Speaker 2 (04:36):
So.
Speaker 3 (04:37):
AstroTurf, then, is the most popular example the street name
for a product, a kind of product, a genre of
product that exists all over the Western world. It's weird
because we can get in the origin story of inventions.
It can be kind of tough to suss out who
(04:58):
made what because to your point, Oh, there's so much
parallel thinking that can occur. People like good inventors identify
a problem and then try to reverse engineer right work
back from the problem towards the solution. So it shouldn't
surprise us that there there are a couple of foggy
parts about the AstroTurf or synthetic turf origin story, but
(05:21):
we do know it was not originally named AstroTurf.
Speaker 2 (05:25):
No, it was called kim Grass. Kim Yum. That just
sounds great. Give me what I want to frolic on
some kim grass sounds.
Speaker 3 (05:36):
That was their original motto too, right, Matt kim Grass Yum.
Speaker 2 (05:41):
Yeah yeah, I think so.
Speaker 3 (05:46):
Yeah, So we got these, uh, we got these. One
story goes there are these two dudes, James im Faria
and Robert T. Wright. They worked out of a place
called kim chem strand chem Grass. Get it.
Speaker 2 (06:03):
Well, yeah, well it has to do with synthetic fibers, right,
and creating synthetic fibers became a big deal back in
the sixties.
Speaker 3 (06:14):
Oh yeah, oh my gosh, did so much for workouts,
and synthetics fibers still play a big role, I guess
in gym based internet selfies, right.
Speaker 2 (06:27):
Yeah, well, way more things than you could possibly imagine.
There are synthetic types of fibers that end up in
those products.
Speaker 3 (06:36):
And they're tremendously useful and versatile. The issue is that
they're also in the grand scheme of things, a very
new kind of endeavor for humans. Kim Strand may be
recognizable to some people. I don't know who. You're very
plugged in if you already knew this, because we didn't.
(06:59):
Kim Strand was a subsidiary of Monsanto, who is back.
Monsanto rides again in stuff they don't want you to know.
And they first put this stuff in a school in
Rhode Island back in the sixties. That was like their
test field.
Speaker 2 (07:16):
In nineteen sixty four.
Speaker 4 (07:18):
Yeah, and schools the ultimate cam testing fields.
Speaker 2 (07:24):
Yeah. Yeah. But then in nineteen sixty six that's when
it ended up in Texas where why we know it
as astro turf.
Speaker 3 (07:36):
Yeah, and want a shout out David Cheney, who is
also often mentioned as the inventor of AstroTurf. Some other
manufacturers cite him. There's a Sports Illustrated article about him.
They say that he's the guy responsible for creating this stuff.
The way they put it, is responsible for indoor Major
(07:58):
League Baseball. Millions of welcome Matt's origin story aside, Matt,
You're absolutely right. The big moment, the real debut comes
in Houston, Texas, nineteen sixty six at the Astrodome. The
Astrodome at the time is cutting edge it's like that.
It's like the beginning of that Simpson's monorail episode. Everybody
(08:20):
wants to have an astrodome. It's an indoor stadium, you
know what I mean. Finally humanity has Humanity has conquered
the gods of weather and said, we don't care what
the environment's like. We're gonna play till the ninth inning.
Speaker 2 (08:38):
Well, it's human engineering. It's beautiful human engineering at work. Right.
We need a way to have these baseball games, like
maybe in a pure way. It's pure baseball, right, you
don't got to worry about getting rained out, you don't
got to worry about super crazy hot days when you're
out there playing on the field. Let's do it indoors.
So like that's They solved a ton of problem by
(09:00):
putting a dome on top of the stadium, but then
it created more problems.
Speaker 4 (09:05):
Yeah, like these things often do well.
Speaker 2 (09:08):
And one of the major problems was they in order
to light that stadium right, like correctly, to get enough
light inside that dome, you had to have crazy strong
lights on the dome all over it.
Speaker 3 (09:21):
Yeah, and then they had to they actually had to
step some of that back and pint some of the
ceiling lighting area because the lights were too bright for
the players to see the balls coming down.
Speaker 2 (09:33):
And well, yeah, imagine the sun is one point of
light in the sky, right and it may not be
directly above you while you're playing. Sometimes it is, but
even then it's one point of light. Now you've got
like dozens.
Speaker 3 (09:46):
Now you're in the spotlight no matter where you look.
And they also had a problem with the grass. This
thing that I love that you point out the architecture
reminds me of my favorite architecture quote, which is, gosh,
I can't remember who said it, but someone once described
architecture's frozen poetry. Ooh yeah, And I think that's a
(10:08):
really beautiful way to think about it. And things like
the stadium, these massive marvels of human engineering. They really are.
There is poetry to them. But there's also a really
tough landscaping situation, which is nuts, but it makes sense
because they had such a hard time keeping the grass
(10:29):
growing and this enormous indoor cutting edge stadium that by
the second half of the nineteen sixty five baseball season
they literally said, Paul, beat me here. They said, get
We're just gonna have to paint the dead grass green
because we can't grow it. And of course, if you
have ever played baseball, you know the grass the field
(10:53):
itself is a big part of how you play. The
game's right of dreams apparently.
Speaker 2 (10:59):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (11:00):
And chemicals.
Speaker 3 (11:01):
Yeah, so they tried a new option. They tried several
different types of grass. None of it would take, so
they resurfaced the field with chem grass from your friends
at Kimstrand, the subsidiary of Monsanto Global chem Yeah, which
itself is probably a subsidiary of Illumination Global Unlimited. There's
(11:23):
a lot of questions still out there, right, So what
was kim grass?
Speaker 4 (11:29):
Well, kim grass is essentially a carpet of fake grass.
You can transport it to like these roles, you know.
So essentially it is a carpet of half inch thermoplastic
fibers that's attached to a rubber mat and then laid
on top of a base. In this case it would
be an asphalt base. Chemstrand was smart, you know, in
(11:52):
their branding play here when they thought of this as
an opportunity to rename it based on this new use.
Because you know, we have the team obviously that named
the Astros and the stadium and all of that, but
also Astro just has that kind of thing of the
future vibe, right, So they rename the stuff from the
(12:16):
maybe more accurate and possibly ill advised named Kemgrass to
Astro Turf.
Speaker 3 (12:21):
Get it.
Speaker 2 (12:23):
Well, yeah, it makes a ton of sense from a
branding perspective, right, from a marketing perspective, from a company
that's like, oh, this is kind of working, guys, I
think we could probably do this again like a lot.
Speaker 4 (12:35):
Let's create an association with a pre existing beloved brand.
Speaker 2 (12:39):
No, right, guys, this is a moment in like history history.
So in the news this thing. People are talking about
this in the New York Times. Oh wow, brand new,
brand new turf going in and it's a stuff of
the future. Everyone look at this Astro too, which.
Speaker 3 (12:55):
Is also I think, was it stuff from the future.
We we had another show, yeah, yeah, yeah yeah.
Speaker 2 (13:03):
Where by the way, Paul worked on stuff of genius.
I don't know if you guys, remember I.
Speaker 4 (13:09):
Have a video editor.
Speaker 3 (13:10):
Did I get some reputation for not acknowledging people's work.
Speaker 2 (13:13):
No, no, no, I just totally forget well.
Speaker 3 (13:16):
Shout out to Paul. Yes, Paul is an absolute mastermind.
And Paul's Paul's parents, many many people, many people's parents
in the show today, as well as some of our
fellow conspiracy realists listening now, may have been alive when
(13:36):
this news hit, and it was nationwide, it was syndicated,
It was a big deal. It was very Jetsons, it's
very futuristic. Also, it's a way better name than Keem Grass.
You know what were their other mottos. Their first one
was young and then their second one was kim Grass
to pay for the ground, like they needed the help
with an AstroTurf was there. It also looked like it's
(13:59):
saw so many problems. You're a stadium owner and you say, okay,
there's an upfront cost here, but over X amounts of years,
I won't have to pay for near as much maintenance. Right,
So this is a long term investment for me, and
I want my stadium to stay around as long as possible.
(14:20):
So it becomes incredibly common in indoor and outdoor stadiums
all through the seventies. It goes beyond the borders of
the US. It's in Canada, it's in Toronto, and well.
Speaker 2 (14:33):
Yeah, Major League Baseball really really bought into the stuff.
There were a ton of brand new stadiums that were
built with this this turf, artificial turf laid down there,
and it was again touted as, oh man, this is
a great new thing. We got.
Speaker 3 (14:48):
This is how the pros play, right. And as of
twenty twenty three, there are more than twelve thousand artificial
turf playing fields of some sort the United States, and
according to a trade group that we'll get into a
little bit later called the Synthetic Turf Council, more than
(15:09):
twelve hundred or so or installed every year in recent years,
definitely twenty thirteen, and the pattern seems to have continued
up until at least the pandemic. The idea for ask
Returf comes from a place called the Educational Facilities Laboratory
and nonprofit and they said, we want to help people learn.
(15:33):
We want to create and foster environments that set kids
up for success. And they've found a really interesting study
that showed if you're a military recruit in the fifties
and you come from a rural area, you will tend
to be more physically fit than recruits from urban areas
from big cities. And this is back before the majority
(15:54):
of humans lived in big cities, so it's a little
easier to study this. This this caused someone to urge
Monsanto to create a grass like surface that you could
lay down in city lots so kids have more places
to play. And you can see stuff like this in
playgrounds all across big cities, right Like, if you've ever
(16:15):
walked around New York, then you will see that kind
of green patch with the playground equipment and it's not
real grass, right, but it might be grass like. That's
what they were aiming for. They thought it was the
best thing. It's the turf for the future. A lot
of actual baseball players, because remember this started in Major
League Baseball. They didn't dig it. They were concerned.
Speaker 2 (16:41):
Yeah, well, one of the biggest problems is when you're
playing baseball, often you dive for things.
Speaker 3 (16:46):
You know.
Speaker 2 (16:47):
A lot of that is when you're sliding, you know,
if you're running around the bases doing stuff like that.
But if you're in the outfield, you know that you're
going to be diving for balls every once in a while.
And when you do something like that in your arm,
like you're let's say your elbow scratches along the grass
or something on the ground, you're gonna get cut up
(17:08):
a little bit. Right, It may not be crazy bad,
but you might get cut up a little bit, a
little bruising, but if you're on this artificial turf. The
baseball players started noticing that they were getting what was
akin to rugburn, like really really bad rugburn anytime they
would dive for anything.
Speaker 4 (17:25):
Well, I also have to ask, I mean, you know
any you know, any any league play type you know,
sport where yeah, you ultimately are like playing to get
into playoffs and then some sort of championship. You know,
is it consistency important, like in terms of like the
venues where you play, And couldn't having astro turf on
some stadiums and not others be considered either just kind
(17:49):
of like skewing the figures a little bit.
Speaker 3 (17:53):
Yeah, that's that could be a concern. And you know,
every uh, every every stadium seat umpire would raise that
and other variables to explain the outcome of a game,
especially if they're team lost. Sorry, folks, But the issue
for the players was not just the rashes, the rugburn,
(18:18):
the skids that these ballplayers are encountering. It's the fact
that they never healed. At least that's what we heard
from folks like former Astros outfielder Bob Watson. Turns out
Bob may have been pretty prescient. This stuff was spreading
to football stadiums as well. By nineteen eighty four, seventeen
(18:40):
out of twenty eight NFL teams we're playing on artificial turf.
And to your point, Nol about the importance of having
a uniform field of play wherever you go, there's a
pretty good argument you can make at this time where
you say, Okay, now we're equalizing things. We need to
make this turf ubiquitous. It needs to be the stand
(19:00):
very convenient for the Globochems of the world.
Speaker 4 (19:04):
Oh yeah, a bit of a pain in the butt
for Major League Baseball and anyone that's responsible for retrofitting
all of these stadiums.
Speaker 3 (19:12):
I'm picturing. I'm picturing right now. I'm picturing the the
AstroTurf folks making handshake deals and leaning in and saying
Kim Grass the way that people said Hail Hydras exactly
in those Marvel movies.
Speaker 4 (19:27):
Yeah, y'all, not to act like I'm oh, poor major
League Baseball, but I mean, you know, anytime you have
like a sea change like this where a new anything
comes up and it becomes sort of the order of
the day. So there are people who have to kind
of kick into gear and figure out how to make
the change without disrupting their season.
Speaker 2 (19:46):
Well, yeah, but guys, I think the biggest thing here's
where you're talking about the handshake deal whispering in about
Kim Grass there, because we learned pretty recently. Gosh, I
guess it was a while ago now, but when the
Braves got a new stadium in a different part of Atlanta,
you guys remember this, or I guess not even really
Atlanta in com County, And just how huge of a deal,
(20:08):
how much money was to be made when a new
stadium was being built. And in this time, just before
AstroTurf starts making its way into other major leagues, there
are a ton of brand new fields that are constructed
with specifically chemgrass as one of the major selling points.
Speaker 3 (20:29):
Right. Yeah, now, it's a feature, you know, like you're
buying a car. You could pony up a little extra
and get the airbags or the power of steering, the
seat belt and so on. Yes, if seat belts gave
you cancer.
Speaker 2 (20:45):
Or hey, the tires, you can get the tower.
Speaker 3 (20:48):
Go oh god, yeah, we'll get to it.
Speaker 4 (20:50):
I was annoyed to find when I bought my certified
pre owned Honda Fit that it did not come with
floor mats.
Speaker 3 (20:58):
I know what later, what are you? What are you
a billionaire? You're buying cars with floor mats? Chassa over here. Uh,
I've been going through a thing where I referenced Monssa.
Speaker 4 (21:12):
I don't know who is, but I imagine it's a big
wig of some For a long time, the the most
wealthy dude in history went on a tour on the
African continent back in the day and broke the economies
of every place he went to, just because he rolled with.
Speaker 3 (21:32):
That much gold. Uh maybe a ridiculous history episode.
Speaker 2 (21:37):
Yeah, floor mats equals mansa musa.
Speaker 3 (21:40):
Yeah, all these fancy these floormat tycoons also artificial turf
floor mats. Probably don't buy them. You'll see why. But
but that is weird just to say on that for
a second though, Like they no floor mats.
Speaker 4 (21:56):
Well, he didn't tell me either.
Speaker 3 (21:57):
I had.
Speaker 4 (21:58):
I got the car and then I looked in there
and I was just like paper on the floor and
there's no floor mats. And I called him, and the
guy acted like I was asking the most ridiculous question.
I was like, what do.
Speaker 3 (22:06):
Formats are of the car?
Speaker 2 (22:08):
Yeah?
Speaker 4 (22:09):
He said that actually, and uh and then yeah, I
just ended up buying some kind of aftermarket ones or whatever.
Floormats aren't like crazy expensive. I'm sorry at the end
of ramp, they're not crazy expensive. But yeah, you think
that would be stock.
Speaker 3 (22:23):
I do a double system. I get the kind of
the shell floormat and then the fabric one on top
of that. It's just easier to clean, ask no one.
So anyhow, the uh, we'll talk about layers in a minute.
That's that's kind of a segway anyway. So the NFL
players also share the concerns of the baseball players when
(22:45):
it comes to AstroTurf. They say, this surface is harder,
We're getting more strains, we're getting more abrass than we
did playing just on natural grass. And they also, this
is interesting. I didn't see a ton of this popping
up a lot. I don't know if you guys saw it,
but there were complaints that abrasions from artificial turf also
(23:08):
led to staff infections.
Speaker 2 (23:10):
H yeah, I remember reading that in the Science History
Institute article you shared Ben that. Yeah, I think that's
that's a common thing, like, because they don't heal very
quickly for one reason or another, the infection can set in.
Speaker 3 (23:27):
Yeah, and it already feels a little creepy too, right
that the idea that a braiding your skin on this
surface will take longer to heal than if it were
abraided on grass. It's just weird. This didn't phase the
AstroTurf crew nor the other manufacturers entering the market. Were
millions of dollars, millions acres acres of turf, and they
(23:52):
were doing this by expanding past the major leaks, past
the NFL. They were going to minor leaks. We're going
to cope even high school teams, right, and with great
success because they had this beautiful marketing, you know, play
like the big boys essentially.
Speaker 2 (24:08):
Well, I think about it again. We talked about this before,
but the number of Major League Baseball stadiums in this
country is very tiny. The numbers NFL teams like twenty
eight or something, I don't even know, thirty That that's
just you can make your money that many times if
you stay there in the big time, but if you
move out to the small time. Every county in the
(24:30):
country has multiple high schools, right, oh yeah.
Speaker 4 (24:36):
And if that's entially like farm teams and stuff too,
you know, or like you know, minor league and.
Speaker 3 (24:40):
All of that, right, minor leagues are a big thing.
That The the cool thing about this business model too,
if we're being just a bit soulless, is that if
everything goes right, they're going to keep building more schools. Yeah,
and what are those schools need? They need more places
to play, so kaching players are complaining. And over time
(25:02):
baseball stadiums, we know, the major ones start converting back
to natural surfaces. New varieties and strains of grass come out,
and this enables you know, this enables more hardy plants matter.
And if you go to the nineteen nineties, you'll see
that the synthetic turf manufacturers introduce what they call a
(25:27):
new generation of turf, a new and improved formula, and
they say this will be safer, softer, more comfortable.
Speaker 2 (25:36):
And we'll tell you all about what those changes were
and what they meant for everybody's health. Right after a
word from our sponsors and we're back.
Speaker 4 (25:51):
So we sort of teased before the break that there
was a change in this synthetic turf that supposedly would
create a safer and more comfortable playing surface. This is
in the nineties, so what kind of changes are we
talking about. Obviously the goal here is to imitate grass
as much as possible, you know, in terms of the
(26:12):
feel and the length of the fibers or the material
or whatever. But we know, as we mentioned earlier, that
this was causing some kind of nasty injuries. You know,
when folks were skidding around, they were basically getting like
turf rash. So in order to mitigate that, I think,
if I'm not mistaken, guys, the idea was to lengthen
these grass fibers a bit. That could perhaps cause a
(26:34):
little more cushioning, create a little bit more of a
soft landing.
Speaker 2 (26:38):
Well, yeah, they'll bend a little more when your elbows
and knees and everything land on them.
Speaker 3 (26:43):
Yeah. And they also one of the big improvements was
what's called the infill. You can get a good picture
of this if you go to the Synthetic Turf Council.
But of course be aware that they have a horse
in the race, right they have a team there rooting for.
Speaker 2 (27:02):
Them. We went on their website, looked at all the companies.
Oh yeah, yeh.
Speaker 3 (27:09):
Get ready for that one. What you need to know
now is that the infill, the stuff that provides a
lot of this cushioning when they came out with these improvements,
it consisted of something called crumb rubber like cake crumb
with a b rubber from used tires specifically that gets
(27:30):
ground up into particles that are usually about just one
millimeter across, and then they get mixed up with sand.
And this was at the time a very cool solution
to another problem. People had piles and piles and piles
of tires and they didn't know what to do with them,
(27:51):
you know what I mean. They they knew they wouldn't
decompose very easily, and they were in open air dump
They became condos for rats and vermin, mosquitoes, roaches, and
if the weather conditions were right or wrong, then these
piles of tires would catch on fire.
Speaker 2 (28:11):
I am just I love this episode, guys, because it
really is human ingenuity and engineering at play, all intertwining.
Just the idea of how important tires are to the
growth of the United States of America, right, and Ben,
I know you know a ton about that with car stuff,
but like just how important building creating something that could
(28:36):
get all of the cars around on these brand new
interstates we had built at one time.
Speaker 3 (28:44):
For Henry Ford even built his own town right out
in Brazil just to make tires and a bursty humility.
He called it Fordlandia. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (28:54):
But then at some point those tires go back and
there are you know, some companies who special in getting
a tire back ready to go on the road, but
mostly those tires end up in a landfill mm hmm.
Speaker 3 (29:07):
Yeah. And those dumps are also they're you know, they're
not completely cut off from the environment obviously, so rain
water falls on these tires and that helps chemicals from
the tires leach into the ground. Everybody's saying these tires
are a problems. So if you are an inventor and
you come forward and you say, hey, I've got a
(29:29):
great way to use these, you know, you can forget
about the rat condos and those constant tire fires. Well,
let's play baseball. Then it sounds like a win win, right.
Speaker 2 (29:40):
Yeah. The mosquitoes for me, it's really the mosquitos.
Speaker 3 (29:43):
Is the mosquitoes for you, and just taking like, think
about how many tires they're using too. One one industry
estimate we saw said that covering a NFL regulation football
field with synthetic turf using is the equivalent of twenty
thousand to forty thousand tires, which is a great way
(30:07):
to clean your landfill.
Speaker 2 (30:09):
I mean, that's awesome, but I don't I never saw
the statistics for the number of tires scrap tires that
end up in landfills every year. I know it's a ton, right,
it's a problem. Yeah, twenty to forty thousand, that's definitely
making a dent. But is it just a dent?
Speaker 4 (30:27):
When you get new tires, you know, and oftentimes the
auto shop or whatever, they'll for a fee dispose of
your tires for you, sort of more of an out
of sight, out of mind convenience. But it isn't really
like they're just vanishing these tires in a puff of smoke.
I mean, they're just going to one of these same places, right.
Speaker 2 (30:45):
They'll yeah, ship them to another country sometimes.
Speaker 3 (30:48):
Probably exactly, Yeah, and they'll they'll just it's a like
a nimby fee you pay quite literally so that those
tires are not in your backyard the tire manufacturer. Here's
the tricky part. Tires are definitely not garden variety rubber
like you would get from plant source. They contain a
(31:11):
lot of chemicals that make them reliable on the road,
stuff like oh, here we go, polysicilic aromatic hydrocarbons that
makes it stronger, makes it more durable. But then they
also treat it with zinc oxide. Zinc oxide can have lead,
it can have cabmium, which is also bad. This stuff
(31:32):
makes the tire more elastic, it makes it last longer,
but the entire entire time it is emitting those chemicals
or things generated by those substances. So in two thousand
and nine, the EPA says, all right, all right, we've
heard the people. We're gonna we're gonna check out synthetic
(31:55):
turf in these sports fields and by this point in
the two thousands it's on playgrounds too, and we're going
to see if any of these particulates, any of these
weird metals or chemicals or what are called volatile organic
compounds aka new car smell stuff. We're going to see
if that is dangerous to the people playing there. And surprise,
(32:18):
the EPA said, nah, all good.
Speaker 2 (32:22):
Yeah, of course they did. Of course they did. Uh
we kind of I don't want to. I don't want
to glide over this fact too much. It is these
turfs are being used in playgrounds, in playgrounds at schools,
and playgrounds in public parks, all kinds of places. And
you know, if there's potentially a problem, we got a
(32:42):
serious problem. Because it's not only affecting professional you know,
baseball players, football players, high school football players and baseball
players and soccer players. It's affecting little kids who are
just out there innocently playing on a playground.
Speaker 3 (32:58):
And you could argue all all the people involved or innocent, no.
Speaker 2 (33:02):
One else, No, no baseball player, no Major League baseball
players innocent. I'm just sure no. But I guess what
I mean from a public concern standpoint, right, that ups
the ante when kids are now involved.
Speaker 3 (33:17):
Understood, Yeah, and agreed. And today only five professional baseball
teams still use synthetic fields. But just because the things
gone doesn't mean the effects or consequences of it have vanished.
Just last month, as we record, a report came out
via the Philadelphia Enquirer alleging that six former Philadelphia Phillies
(33:39):
may have died from exposure to this stuff. Here's where
it gets crazy. It appears to be true. Again, we
were very careful in the beginning to say, like, we
don't have all of the clue pieces, right. We know
a place, we know a possible weapon, and we know
(34:00):
a possible victim or perpetrator, but we don't have it
all connected. Yet We're still like a card short.
Speaker 2 (34:07):
What did the we know a place where glioblastoma exists? Sorry,
oh god, nailed it?
Speaker 3 (34:14):
Okay, Well, yeah, let's talk about that. What's what's the scoop?
What did Philly tell us? So?
Speaker 4 (34:20):
The Philadelphia Inquirer reported that these six athletes, all of
whom we talked about this in the Strange News segment,
died from a very rare brain cancer called glioblastoma. Had
played most of their careers with the Phillies, which the
team that competed on artificial turf in Veteran stadium for decades.
(34:45):
Former EPA scientist named Kyla Bennett, who is now with
the Public Employees of Environmental Responsibility nonprofit, have this to
say about the whole the whole situation. There is a
high number of Philadelphia Phillies diagnosed with this rare cancer,
and it looks weird, so that should be a red flag.
(35:05):
We don't know what those chemicals are doing to us.
What happened to exercising caution when we're talking about human health.
This is a very good question, you know, I mean,
and something that we've talked about many times where something like,
for example, asbestos. You know, at one time it was
promoted as being this magical future material that was you know,
(35:26):
going to be everything should be built out of this stuff,
and then of course they are off to the races
installing it and everywhere from schools to hospitals, you know,
you name it. Only too fine, through subsequent research and
advances in technology and you know, analysis that this stuff
is just deadly. I mean, it does seem like we
(35:47):
are very you know, hot for the next new thing
and the next new whatever that thing might be, sometimes
to the point of you know, hedging our bets and saying, oh,
it's fine, we done our due diligence. But then that
due diligence changes and the scope of it changes over
time as new methods become available for checking into this stuff.
(36:10):
Not to mention when you start to see red flags
like these cases we're seeing here.
Speaker 2 (36:13):
Well, and remember the connection between the artificial turf and
those rare cancers at this point when we're you know,
when we're when it's being looked into. Even then when
the Philadelphia Inquirers read is talking about it and writing
about it, it is just a connection, right. It's like, oh,
here's one commonality between these six baseball players that got
(36:36):
this rare cancer. But that's apparently not when the concern
began when it comes to baseball players being affected potentially
by that artificial turf.
Speaker 1 (36:48):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (36:49):
Yeah. And for her part too, Kyla Bennett is a
subject matter expert and is not doing some kind of
polemical like hot take. Genuinely say it looks weird. It
should be a red flag. Yeah. I think that's pretty understandable, right,
And like you were saying, Matt, this is I don't
(37:10):
know about guys. I was surprised to find that concerns
date back so far. It goes beyond players saying like, hey,
I don't care for this from my personal experience. In
twenty seventeen, New York Times published an article about this
very thing, and Matt, you want to hit them with
the headline.
Speaker 2 (37:30):
Yeah, sure, The New York Times says the brain cancer
that keeps killing baseball players.
Speaker 3 (37:37):
Oof, not pulling a lot of punches there. Yeah in
the big Apple. Okay, well this.
Speaker 2 (37:43):
Really is rare. Well you know it's rare to be
an MLB player. Well yeah, you know, this brain cancer
is really rare. Though.
Speaker 3 (37:50):
I like that you're adding that layer too, because now
we're seeing an increased selection, right, So we should note
that in these studies and reports all the stuff we've found,
multiple experts on brain cancer, like neurooncologists and so on,
take a lot of pains to say there's not a
(38:11):
one hundred percent confirmed causation. And they're they're doing that
because they're doctors, they're experts. They don't want to say
something is confirmed unless they're one hundred percent sure. So
we can we can note that. But while we're noting
that entirely to be fair, that's from the experts, we
(38:32):
also have to note gleo blastoma is incredibly rare. It's
it's it's not like it's not like diabetes or something
or some other widespread condition.
Speaker 4 (38:47):
No, And it's something we've talked about in the past too,
with these kinds of class action lawsuits, you know, even
about you know, the Dark Waters scenario, you know, with
the stuff that's on the nonstick pans. It is difficult
to proof unequivocally that any of these kinds of substances
are one hundred percent responsible for someone's cancer because there
(39:09):
are so many other factors to take into consideration.
Speaker 3 (39:13):
You know, yes, but discloblastoma stuff, it has an incidents
or a frequency rate of only three point two one
per one hundred thousand people.
Speaker 4 (39:24):
Like, so, is does that help the case or hurt
the case? I think it helps. It helps the case, yes, exactly,
because you know, if it was a more general cancer
that was more widely contracted, that would be more of
a needle in the haystack kind of situation. Because this
is such a narrowed focus, you know, in terms of
like what the what the fallout might have been, you know,
(39:45):
the consequences. Rather then it's a little easier to suggest causation.
Speaker 3 (39:51):
Right, yeah, yeah, just so, Like I mean, it'd be
different if everybody was dying of some disease called like
baseball at hand, you know what I mean, Like that
would be kind of easy trace. But here you can
see there's a lot of coincidence. Right. As a matter
of fact, I think we're being quite diplomatic and deferring
(40:13):
to the experts when we say this is not one
hundred percent proven, but the stuff we're getting into next
will probably affect the way you think about playgrounds in
your neighborhood.
Speaker 2 (40:25):
Oh for sure. I just want to make the point
I this is an estimate, but there are around twelve
one hundred Major League Baseball players at any given time. Okay,
twelve hundred. How many people live in the United States.
Speaker 3 (40:40):
Guys, more than year and thirty million. Yeah, hmmm, very
small sample set, right, And that group of twelve hundred people,
they do a lot of the same stuff. They do
some things that normal people don't do because of their job, right,
Like who's who's most likely to have a space related injury? Astronauts?
(41:05):
You know what I mean. That's like who's most likely
to encounter the dangerous effects of synthetic turf? The people
who are around it the most often, you know. And
so all of this turf, this is the part where
we have to introduce another recurring villain on the show.
All of this turf is made with pfas per and
(41:28):
polyfloral aalkal substances, forever chemicals, forever chemicals.
Speaker 2 (41:35):
SHY twelve or fourteen.
Speaker 3 (41:38):
Diamond why by a diamond, get her something that'll last.
Get her pfas exactly I'm getting. She already has it.
Speaker 2 (41:47):
It's already just like yours.
Speaker 3 (41:51):
Uh yeah. Some of these turfs are still made with
recycled tires, which means they contain all all the nasty
stuff that is bad for you but great for a
long lasting tire. And as a result of growing number
communities and even states in the US have banned these
specific types of turf or said hey, we should think
(42:13):
about banning these, and even the testing of multiple artificial fields,
the newer ones, the older ones, across the board, they
found that they're still a pretty high and dangerous presence
of pfas compounds, no matter which one you look into
and shout out to the Enquirer again over in Philly.
Speaker 2 (42:35):
And just one thing I want to point out here.
We talked about how the EPA in two thousand and
nine took a look at this artificial turf and said, hey, guys,
all those concentrations of those things you're worried about, they're
way below what we would call levels of concern, so
we're good to go on the turf. There was a
(42:55):
watchdog nonprofit called Public employees for environmental responsibility, And right
after the EPA released those findings in two thousand and nine,
they said, hey, guys, you haven't thought about the temperature.
Speaker 4 (43:08):
It's a good point. I mean, listen, look, we let's
just say that. We don't want to besmirch the good
name of the EPA, but it does seem like sometimes
these these allowable levels, these tolerances that end up becoming
codified by them, are just convenient enough for big business.
(43:29):
Just putting that out there.
Speaker 3 (43:31):
Yeah, yeah, like, hey, we can't keep all the rat
poop out of cereal? What's a reasonable amount? That's still
one of my favorite things. And this is, you know,
again not to denigrate the EPA. The individuals working there
are brilliant people who are doing their best. We're talking
about a systemic problem with corruption in the EPA, that's right.
Speaker 4 (43:52):
Yeah, the ones that are the regulators that are actually
you know, the researchers, the regulators, the folks that are
working there day to day, not the folks that were
thumbing our noses at a little bit. It's the higher ups.
It's the folks that like create past the laws that
ultimately kind of stemy the EPA from actually doing important work.
Speaker 2 (44:11):
Yeah, but guys, I'm so sorry to just keep going
back at this, but the the artificial turf testing the
EPA did was so underwhelming. Let's say, because we're talking
about these forever chemicals that exist in these grasses right
in these fibers, and then you've got the sun that's
beating down on them all day if you're not inside
(44:31):
an astrodome, and when that sun hits these artificial chemicals,
gets surface temperatures of up to one hundred and fifty
degrees fahrenheit, which means you've got plastics and these carbons
that are just getting superheated.
Speaker 4 (44:49):
Being released right into the air. I would imagine, well, yeah.
Speaker 2 (44:53):
And then you've got players running around on them with cleats.
Speaker 4 (44:56):
Nothing's gonna diving, right, Yeah, So they're they're they're roughing
them up with their cleats. They're already in a state
of kind of heated, you know, let's just say they're
being almost what's the word I'm looking for activated, right,
and then they're getting roughed up with these cleats. People
are diving into them face first. I'm sure this stuff
(45:18):
has I mean, even just the layman like us would
be like what's the deal with that? Why aren't they
testing for these situations?
Speaker 3 (45:25):
Yeah, and add to that, the EPA recently revised its
health advisory for at least one of these things, PFOS
per fluorooctane sulfonic acid, and they said, huh okay, we
looked back into it, and no level of exposure to
this stuff is safe, at least in drinking water. Zero
(45:48):
percent is good. And one of the reasons we keep
shouting out the Inquirer over in Philly is because they
obtained pieces of the Phillies artificial turf and they took
it to not one, but two labs and found it
contained sixteen types of pfas or pfas, including the stuff
(46:09):
that the EPA said should absolutely not be around.
Speaker 4 (46:13):
Am I the only one that when we talk about
PFA is I think of pf Chang's just putting that
out there.
Speaker 3 (46:19):
I think, Okay, well, was it close to lunchtime, as
let's take a you know what, let's take a snack break,
snack with us. Folks will be right back and get
into probably the most disturbing part of this tale. We've returned.
(46:45):
So this is a bit like forensic work. Again. We
can't prove exposure cause these cancers, but we can place
the victims in direct, repeated contact with substances that are
proven to cause these conditions. Pfas bad news. Corporations spend
a lot of time and effort matrix dodging this issue
(47:07):
in the past and in the present day. These forever chemicals,
they don't break down. They're around, and they cannot wait
to help you get cancer, birth defects, liver problems, kidney disease.
They're waiting for you, and they get inside you pretty easily.
It's not vampire rules. You don't have to invite them in.
(47:30):
They can be inhaled, ingested. They can be absorbed through
the skin, especially through a scrape or an open wound,
say on a baseball field or a soccer field, or
to playgrounds.
Speaker 2 (47:44):
Dude, did you see the NBC reporting from twenty fourteen
about artificial turf and soccer players, specifically goalies who were constantly,
you know, jumping right and landing on the ground as
they're attempting to stop balls from getting in the goal.
The oh my god, you guys. So many young female
(48:06):
players ended up getting types of leukemia, types of cancers,
and there were so many goalies. You got to check
out the reporting out of NBC from twenty fourteen if
you haven't read that yet, it's called how safe is
the artificial turf your child plays on?
Speaker 3 (48:22):
Yeah, and again these headlines are speaking volumes. Right. The
Phillies played on this turf between nineteen seventy one to
two thousand and three. The six people who died died
in their forties or their fifties. Additionally, globlastoma. The median
age for that is sixty four, so they're dying at
(48:45):
about three times the rate of the adult male general population.
Medical experts will acknowledge the pieces are all there, but
they stopped short of a full confirmation. They say, you know,
and this is fair. They say. Other factors may have played.
Lifestyle choices, right, temperature, concussions, things like that. But long
(49:06):
story short, doesn't look good, doesn't stop in Philly is
super popular for a long time. There needs to be
a lot more research. Recommendations include things like hiring epidemiologists,
let's get some statisticians in there, or maybe, hey, we
should start a registry of players along with their causes
of death. And the fact that there's not something like
(49:28):
that already is pretty weird. It reminds me of the
time we learned that the FBI just doesn't bother keeping
a list of people who disappear in national parks.
Speaker 4 (49:37):
I have a question. We talked about this briefly, I
think on the Strange News segment, But like, you know,
when someone dies of lung cancer and they were a smoker,
they can you know, the determination could be made that
smoking may have been a contributing factor, but you can't
exactly say, yes, smoking is definitely what killed this person.
Speaker 3 (50:00):
It would be tough. It would be tough because that person,
unless they were in a controlled environment for the entirety
of their life, they would inevitably run into other things
that could be carcinogetic at some point, especially in the US,
if they drove a.
Speaker 2 (50:15):
Car outside him.
Speaker 4 (50:17):
Well, and again, like we we have this research, but
we don't know exactly how much exposure is too much?
Is one time too much?
Speaker 3 (50:26):
You know?
Speaker 4 (50:27):
Is it ten times? Is it one season, one year
of relatively regular exposure. They don't have those answers. Nobody does,
to my understanding, at least, I just wanted to see
if that's how y'all saw it as well.
Speaker 3 (50:41):
Well. I am curious there might be a group that
low key does have the answers. We have to talk
about the implications hashtag. No, Dennis Reynolds didn't always going
to show up so much of the show, but hashtag
not that kind of implication. So the turf was made
from old tires solve a pre existing problem the tires
from one place to another, doesn't solve the original problem
(51:03):
with the tires. It just sort of kicks it into
another neighborhood. And we found a group that we wanted
to talk about a little bit today called the Synthetic
Turf Council. They are the biggest trade group representing AstroTurf,
synthetic turf in general. And there is a lobbyists, right yeah,
or trade association, industry group, whatever phrase you want to
(51:26):
hang it on.
Speaker 2 (51:27):
They're they're advocates.
Speaker 3 (51:29):
They're the turf Gang, the turf Boys.
Speaker 4 (51:31):
Yeah, turf Gang. I like that.
Speaker 3 (51:33):
So Turf Gang is in this intense rivalry between proponents
of natural grass and these applications, and you you can
go to their website right now, we got under the hood.
I'm very curious. I want to be fully transparent here.
I'm very curious what they're members only information is because
(51:56):
they have a free public facing side of the site,
and then for like a little less than one hundred bucks,
they'll give you the you know, they'll give you the
fresh fresh scoop.
Speaker 2 (52:05):
I'm going I'm molling, let's go. Yeah, I might hang
out with Larry Ridgeway the VC over there. What's up?
What's up, Larry, We're gonna hang on your members only area.
Speaker 4 (52:21):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (52:22):
Do they have a Patreon anyway? So the STC Synthetic
Turf Council has a lot of information on their public
side of the site. You can see cool cross sections
of how modern synthetic turf is made. You can read
reports about their their teams answering basic questions. You can
find a couple of statistics, but you won't find on
(52:45):
the public side of the site much research about the
possible health dangers of astro turf.
Speaker 2 (52:50):
No, it's not in their interest to talk about any
of that stuff.
Speaker 4 (52:54):
In their purview, we're here to to flag wave and
then we're the boosters for this stuff. Let's he no
attention to all of that data.
Speaker 2 (53:02):
Well, but but look like really on the surface, the
synthetic surface, guys like that person Larry that I mentioned,
And Larry, I'm sorry for calling you out. You're just
your face and name is on the front of the
about page.
Speaker 3 (53:16):
I thought you were going to say your face and
name offend me.
Speaker 2 (53:18):
No, not at all. I'm sure Larry's an awesome person.
It's just Larry is the president and CEO of a
couple of companies. One is called Precision Jet, one's called
turf Bond. Precision Jet started back in two thousand and one,
and what they do is they create the graphics that
go on top of synthetic fields. Right, so if you've
(53:40):
got a football team or whatever, they'll they'll get that
going for you. Yeah, and they develop technology back in
two thousand and one to do this kind of stuff
and to make precision cutting. I believe they use I
think it's water and like sand or something that he
uses us. No, but he also works with turf Bond,
which is the big artificial turf adhesive that exists out there.
(54:03):
And why would you know a group that runs companies
like that that are all based on the business of
artificial turf Ever want anybody to hear about the potentially
bad things that this stuff can cause.
Speaker 3 (54:18):
Yeah, another way to think about it. You go to
like you go to like the Domino's Pizza website, You're
not going to see a warning right on the front
page of the website about how too much pizza is bad.
Speaker 2 (54:34):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (54:34):
Man, you know they're not gonna pump your brakes once
you got to the website and.
Speaker 2 (54:39):
Nobody out pizza is the hut? I mean, come on, well, true.
Speaker 3 (54:43):
Little Caesars has entered the chat. They're making crazy bread.
Oh my god.
Speaker 4 (54:49):
All right, so no worried was always worth it?
Speaker 3 (54:53):
Always Okay, well maybe this will be worth it. We
know we're going a little long today, but we wanted
to bring this story to bear one to give it
more attention. Again, not one hundred percent proven, but there's
one last part that stuck with me, and I think
it stuck with all of us, and probably stuck with
some of us listening along at home with all the
(55:15):
news about cancer coming from artificial turf that was made
from reused and scrapped tires. What should we think about
the tires currently in use, the tires on your car,
the tires on your bike, the tires on the countless
vehicles rolling all across your community today. Just like a
baseball player sliding on turf. Those tires are sliding on asphalt, right.
Speaker 2 (55:38):
Yeah, didn't we do? Oh man, there's something pinging here, Ben.
We talked about a new type of tire that was
completely different. It was not based on rubber like that.
It was I think it was stuff for genius. Maybe
it was stuff of the future, but it was a
tire that just I've got an image in my mind.
Speaker 3 (56:00):
It's like a po's like segmented.
Speaker 2 (56:02):
Yes, and it wasn't made of the same substances.
Speaker 3 (56:05):
There are a couple of different things like that. Segment
and tires would be one. I guess we could all
get tank tracks on our vehicles, right and just be
prepared to go a little slower. But how do you
change that whole industry? Well as something you would mentioned too, like.
Speaker 4 (56:21):
How well tires are made of what petroleum? You know?
I mean, it's all part of the same supply chain,
that legacy supply chain that it does not behoove you know,
the old guard to support changing.
Speaker 3 (56:35):
It's not even an old guard question. What I'm getting
as the entirety of like you're right about the petroleum,
the enormity of change, the costs that would have to
occur ripping up all the artificial turf all across the
United States. Even if it's a thing that should be done,
it's going to be difficult to do it. And it's
(56:56):
not if this exposure stuff is true, it's not going
to undo the consequences from the past decades. It's just
gonna hopefully prevent further consequences. I don't know, and you know,
it's not like turf is the only origin point of
this stuff, but it makes you think. I'm here in
tires outside of where I record right now, I'm gonna
(57:19):
take a walk after this. I got to go get
some lunch.
Speaker 4 (57:22):
I don't know, man, you go to PF Changs.
Speaker 3 (57:25):
I don't know. But now we don't have a PF change.
It's convenient, guys, lucky you.
Speaker 4 (57:34):
We can go to the airport.
Speaker 3 (57:35):
We can go to the airport that the.
Speaker 4 (57:37):
PF changs at the airport serves breakfast. That's like a
non PF Chang thing, you know what I mean.
Speaker 3 (57:43):
That's just for you, Heartsfeld, and we want to end
this episode asking how far does this go? Folks would
love to hear your take on the issue, the implications,
and we'd love to hear other examples of seemingly innocuous
things with a dangerous, potentially fatal dark side, Or have
you found research that totally disproves these concerns about turf? Honestly,
(58:07):
if that's the case, would love to read it. Make
I think everybody feel a little bit better.
Speaker 4 (58:12):
Yeah, you can send it to us and through several
means on the internet. You can find us at Conspiracy
Stuff on Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube, Conspiracy Stuff show on
Instagram and TikTok.
Speaker 2 (58:27):
Hey, do you like to call people and talk to
them on your phone? We'll call us. Talk to us
call one eight three three STDWYTK. It's a voicemail system.
Leave a message. You've got three minutes. Please give yourself
a cool nickname and let us know if we can
use your voice and message on the air. If you've
got more to say than can fit in that three minutes,
(58:47):
why not instead send us a good old fashioned email.
Speaker 3 (58:51):
We are conspiracy at iHeartRadio dot com.
Speaker 2 (59:12):
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