Turf Field

[Jimbo Morphis]

Youre welcome professor

lmbo

[scrapiron51]

Nashville will beat you on turf or grass.

[cuckoobird]

Nashville will beat you on turf or grass.

unless you run the wing t

[scrapiron51]

I'd rather one offense beat me one time, then multiple offenses beating me multiple times.

[cuckoobird]

I'd rather one offense beat me one time, then multiple offenses beating me multiple times.

7>4

[scrapiron51]

No one cares about your titles from the 1960's. Stuttgart is terrible this year.

[cuckoobird]

No one cares about your titles from the 1960's. Stuttgart is terrible this year.

we can't count the two from the 60's or it would be worse

[scrapiron51]

Can you count your one from this year?

[cuckoobird]

Can you count your one from this year?

can you? But, we can count the 2012 one and that's more recent than your last

[scrapiron51]

I might be able to count it in a couple of months. That's more than you can say.

[cuckoobird]

I might be able to count it in a couple of months. That's more than you can say.

I might have been able to count it a 2 weeks ago too, but, if's and buts are like candy and nutts

[scrapiron51]

What are you talking about? You are an idiot that is probably going through a midlife crisis because your team can't make the playoffs.

[cuckoobird]

What are you talking about? You are an idiot that is probably going through a midlife crisis because your team can't make the playoffs.

we were still playing two weeks ago. need     me      to     slow     it     down     for     you     ?

[cuckoobird]

I'm going deer hunting now but I will read your fatuous comments later. Enjoy the rest of your day in class and try not to slow the rest of your classmates down. Just because you don't care about your future doesn't mean they don't.

[Gray lizard]

I'm going deer hunting now but I will read your fatuous comments later. Enjoy the rest of your day in class and try not to slow the rest of your classmates down. Just because you don't care about your future doesn't mean they don't.

Getting to hunt on Thursday you the man. Kill a big one. 

[cuckoobird]

I get to hunt whenever i want. Thats the great thing about crapiron being smarter than me

[~WPS~]

Or is it the great thing about living in mom's basement. When you get done cleaning up your action figures, you ask mom if you can go hunting.

[cuckoobird]

Lol

[WalterWhite]

Nashville will beat you on turf or grass.

Nashville has some of the best grass in the state.

[scrapiron51]

Cuck probably draws a welfare check.

[Lionheart88]

SEATTLE -- A local soccer coach is raising serious questions about the material used to make artificial athletic fields

Crumb rubber is made from shredded tires and is used in soccer fields all over the country. The turf is especially popular in Seattle because the tires get recycled and the reliable surface can stand up to soggy weather.

But one local coach sees a troubling connection between the turf and cancer among soccer players.

Soccer runs in the blood of University of Washington assistant coach Amy Griffin. She started playing goalie as a child, and now helps UW goalies stay fit and improve their skills.

Griffin's always searching for new talent and keeps a list of top players. But one list of names isn't about recruiting. On it are 13 players from Washington who have all been diagnosed with rare types of cancer.

Of those 13, 11 come from an even smaller pool of players: Goal keepers.

"Everyone says it's just a coincidence and kind of walks away, but the ratio of goal keepers to field players is 15 to 1, 16 to 2, and I know plenty of goal keepers that have cancers and I don't know many field players," Griffin said.

Griffin said she can't walk away from what she's discovered, and she's not alone. Former professional goalie and reality TV star Ethan Zohn, who has twice beaten non-Hodgkins lymphoma, had been keeping his own list, which he has now handed over to Griffin.

Combined, the lists name 27 players with cancer, and 22 of them are goal keepers.

Griffin can't say why goalies are getting cancer, but she wonders if it's the field turf and the crumb rubber used to make it. She said goalies spend a lot of time on the ground diving for balls, blocking shots and sometimes ingesting the small rubber pellets.

"I lived in the stuff," former UW goal keeper Jorden Alerding said of the turf. "Four to five times a week I was on it for hours -- bleeding sweating, everything. Looking back now I wonder could that have been the cause."

Griffin's first brush with the unproven connection between cancer and the pellets came when she visited Alerding, who was being treated for cancer.

"She said, 'I just think it's something with the field turf. I don't know what it is, but I think there's something in those black dots,'" Griffin said.

The former Husky was diagnosed with non-Hodgkins lymphoma during her freshman year of college when doctors discovered a large, deadly tumor.

"It was about the size, a little bigger than a softball, right in the center of my chest," Alerding said.

Alerding is now cancer free, but she still questions the health effects of crumb rubber and the lack of further research.

"If this can be prevented, I don't know why there isn't more effort being made to do the research and find out," she said.

The pain is still fresh for June Leahy. Her daughter, Austen Everett, a star goalie for Seattle's Blanchet High School and later the University of Miami, died a year and a half ago.

By the time Everett lost her second battle with non-Hodgkins lymphoma, Leahy was raising questions about the use of crumb rubber on soccer fields.

"I feel like there is a strong correlation with the turf," she said.

This isn't the first time people have raised concerns about the turf, either. In 2008, a goal keeper at Tacoma's Stadium High School battled Hodgkins lymphoma. Back then, Luke Beardemphl and his family wondered if crumb rubber had played a part in his cancer.

"I'll catch it. It'll stop the ball but not the pellets. They'll go into my face, go into my eyes, my mouth," Beardemphl said in 2008.

Earlier that year, the US Consumer Product Safety Commission tested some blades of grass used in synthetic turf for lead. The commission found they did not contain enough of it to put children at risk.

The agency later stated that its "exposure assessment did not include chemical or other toxic metals, beyond lead."

Tires do contain metals and chemicals that have been ruled too toxic to burn in Washington state. The average athletic field uses 27,000 of them.

So, can prolonged exposure to the fields make people sick? The Synthetic Turf Council says no.

The president of the trade organization was unavailable to talk about this story, but the group directed us to a statement on its website.

"For 40 years, under EPA oversight and OSHA- regulated manufacturing, not one person has ever reported ill effects related to any materials associated with synthetic turf," the statement reads.

Those statements and tests cannot shake loose the feeling Griffin gets every time she learns the name of another goal keeper with cancer.

She also knows that feelings and suspicion do not equal evidence.

The team's head physician, Dr. John O'Kane, says the concern is valid and has talked with Griffin about the need for scientific and medical research on the effects of crumb rubber.

He said Griffin's list is only a starting point.

"The question you would need to ask is over that same time period, how many goalies are there that haven't gotten cancer?" O'Kane said. "And until you understand that number, you really can't interpret that there's anything particularly dangerous about being a goalie when it comes to cancer."

O'Kane said that kind of research could take years. Griffin hopes someone is willing to take on the work to provide her with an answer. She said any answer will do.

"I would love for it to be disproven or for someone to grab me by the throat and say,'These are the facts. This is why it could never be this. This is just happenstance.' That would be great," she said.

One one former Husky -- Alerding -- is on Griffin's list.

Anecdotal evidence is nice, but no proof of anything.  I'd like to see an actual statistical analysis.

[Jacketman65]

Cuck probably draws a welfare check.

Welfare, unemployment, disability, food stamps, SS, crazy check, EBT,  I'm sure I forgot something, but Cuck will fill us in when he gets back!

[cuckoobird]

Cuck probably worked really hard earlier this year

[Jimbo Morphis]

Nashville will beat you on turf or grass.

Nashville has some of the best grass in the state.

and that is why they don't test their players.

[OLDSCHOOL82]

Nashville will beat you on turf or grass.

Nashville has some of the best grass in the state.

and that is why they don't test their players.

+1

[cuckoobird]

Nashville will beat you on turf or grass.

Nashville has some of the best grass in the state.

and that is why they don't test their players.

or fans. It's pretty easy to tell they've been smoking something

[Jacketman65]

Nashville will beat you on turf or grass.

Nashville has some of the best grass in the state.

and that is why they don't test their players.

or fans. It's pretty easy to tell they've been smoking something

The best of grass will do that to you!

[phdefense]

Nashville will beat you on turf or grass.

Nashville has some of the best grass in the state.

and that is why they don't test their players.

They even bus people in to process it.

[Complete Biased PoV]

So no one but the goalies?

Said it was due to their constant contact with the ground and breathing in the fibers.  I do not recall the total number but it was around 11 from NCAA female goalies.

100% of people who drink water die.....

But seriously, there isn't any definitive proof the turf caused breast cancer, at least no more than if someone was to say the goalies taking shots to the chest caused the cancer.

[cuckoobird]

I said that already

[Complete Biased PoV]

HAHA, guess skipped it.  But see same amount of research....