Local News Investigates Artificial Turf
“Turf War” Feature in Chicago Magazine
Chicago Magazine reporter Debra Pickett spent hours interviewing POP members and researching the series of events that led up to the Latin School Lincoln Park land grab. Her story is a fair account and asks the question we’ve been asking – who wins from a fight like this? Read the story
Artificial Turf Field Opens, Rule of Law and Safety Be D**ned
Dear Concerned Citizen,
Over objections of Protect Our Parks, POP, the Park District has steamrollered an artificial turf soccer field into existence in Lincoln Park. The location was selected to benefit its original sponsor, the Latin School. Construction was sped up before the pending POP lawsuit could be heard.
Our suit asked that construction or use of the field be halted until independent experts could conduct routine health and safety testing of the materials and assess health impacts of the site’s location. Multiple public warnings about artificial turf products have given parents, neighborhood groups and environmental experts across the country serious concerns about exposing children to the variety of toxic substances identified in these synthetic products. Remember – none of these routine tests were done because the site was selected for one reason and one reason alone – to benefit the Latin School.
Official warnings have come from the United States Centers for Disease Control and the Environmental Protection Agency, and the Great Lakes Center for Children’s Environmental Health, affiliated with the University of Illinois Chicago School of Public Health. The Great lakes Center has urged that a natural grass playing surface be retained until a comprehensive Risk Assessment Study could be performed.
The California Attorney General has sued the very turf manufacturer paid by the Park District to install it here. A study by the nonprofit Center for Environmental Health, which triggered the suit by the California attorney general’s office, showed that some turf samples it collected contained lead levels 150 times the limits outlined in the new federal standards for toys. The Connecticut Attorney General and distinguished doctors and scientists all over the country who specialize in preventing harm from environmental poisons. are calling for a halt to further installations of artificial turf until these claims can be fully investigated. The Park District answer to all this is to install more artificial turf fields.
So what now after the Park District’s reckless disregard for due process and public safety? The health and safety issues do not conveniently disappear. The secret deal that spawned the artificial turf field in the heart of Lincoln Park continues to stink. The offense to public interest does not get swept under the rug and allow the Park District do the same deals in parks in other neighborhoods. The legal challenge has not ended and will not until this historic meadow in Lincoln Park is restored to its original natural grass.
Therefore, the need for your outspoken support and contributions to the legal fund remains greater than ever. We need your support in order to show the Park District that we demand they follow due process and due diligence when they build facilities in our parks. No more secret deals. No more land grabs. No more reckless disregard for our health and safety in laying down synthetic turf.
Please contact us if you would like to know more about what is happening or would like to read for yourself all the warning documents that have proliferated on the subject..
WHAT YOU CAN DOIf all this makes you fighting mad and you want to make your voice heard, visit the POP website (WWW.PROTECTOURPARKS.ORG) and make a contribution to the legal fund, AND volunteer to help! Email us at info@cklpp.org and call us at 312-276-5165.
You can also send letters or make calls with your comments to:
- Mayor Richard M. Daley – City Hall 121 North LaSalle Street Room 507 Chicago, IL, 60602 Phone: 312-744-3300 fax: (312) 744-8045
- Ald.Vi Daley(43rd Ward) – 312-744-3071, 773-327-7103, vdaley@cityofchicago.org
- Head of Latin School, Donald Firke – 312-582-6000, dfirke@latinschool.org
- Park Superintendent Tim Mitchell – 312-742-5366, tim.mitchell@chicagoparkdistrict.com
POP Proposes Independent Testing of Artificial Turf Safety
In a letter to Legal Counsels representing the Park District and the City, defendants in POP’s pending lawsuit challenging the safety of artificial turf in the south field of Lincoln Park, POP urges that in the interest of public health and safety concerns the defendants agree to expedited testing by an impartial public health agency before public exposure to the artificial turf Latin Soccer field, which is being dedicated on Saturday.
The United States Centers for Disease Control; Environmental Protection Agency; the local affiliate Great Lakes Center for Occupational and
Environmental Health & Safety, located at the University of Illinois Chicago School of Public Health; the Attorneys General of California and Connecticut; and prominent physicians all over the country have issued urgent warnings about the dangers to child health and safety that exist in artificial turf fields.
Because Latin School, the Park District, the City and Alderman Vi Daley have all refused to act to secure the public safety, a lawsuit was the only recourse possible to compel them to submit samples of everything for independent testing before children are permitted on the field. Although hundreds of stories detailing the various toxic components of artificial turf abound in the news media and on the internet, no precautionary testing was deemed necessary. Like the original illegal secret deal with Latin school, overturned by POP court action, their attitude remains: “the public be damned.”