In the News

For years, she has been watching the sport she loves turn into what she fears could be the cause of pain, cancer and even death.

"I said, 'OK, what's in this rubber?' " Griffin said.

Synthetic turf fields filled with carved up crumb rubber tires have become the norm across the Northwest and the country. 

As a University of Washington soccer coach, Griffin became concerned. She started a list of friends and former players who got cancer.

"All of a sudden the list grew exponentially," she said. 

The number of players on the list has skyrocketed since KOMO began investigating her worries.

The list started with 27 names and now has 165 -- and nearly half are goalies like Amy. 

Correlation doesn't equal causation, but it's enough for Amy to question the reality about exposure to the "black dots."

"We seem to eat them and absorb them and we tend to live in them," she said.

Steve Powers is a high school athletic director in Virginia and is part of the growing nationwide chorus calling crumb rubber into question.

"The first emails that I got, the first phone calls that I got were from former teammates and players," he said. 

That's because he is a former player and cancer survivor who wonders if the turf is to blame.

He wants schools to go back to grass.

"We can prevent them from maybe getting cancer," he said. 

For the first time, people in power are listening.

"I think we should have an investigation and make sure we have all the information," said North Sound congresswoman Suzan DelBene. 

She wants the CDC and other agencies to investigate and get answers.

New Jersey representative Frank Pallone agrees and he's asking his Energy and Commerce committee to take action to protect all players from pros to pee-wee.   

"It's not a huge step to say that crumbling those tires and making them into crumb rubber could have a negative impact," Pallone said. 

But what does the science actually say?

"These cancers are telling us something. Where is the government?" asked Nancy Alderman with the Connecticut-based Environmental and Human Health, Inc.

She says there has been so little concrete hard data on crumb rubber despite it being a mainstream product.

Alderman points to a newly-released report by EHHI that found 10 percent of chemicals in the tires are probably carcinogens, nearly a quarter are known irritants and scientists don't know the damage half of them can cause.

Alderman says schools and companies are treating this generation like a cancer experiment.

"It is unbelievable what has happened. Absolutely unbelievable," she said. 

Ironically, the Environmental Protection Agency advocated using the ground-up tires for sports fields and other recycled purposes nearly 10 years ago.

This was without any serious studies of the safety implications and now the EPA is backtracking and supporting the call for new research. It's the same for the Consumer Product Safety Commission.

Sports leagues take a different approach. The NFL and MLS players associations say they will "closely monitor" research and "welcome any responsible studies on this issue."

The Synthetic Turf Council's Mike Cobb argues that the science is already in. "It's been used for a long time and we believe it's been used safely for a long time," he said.

Cobb believes that the harmful chemicals stay trapped inside the tire rubber. He welcomes more studies, but believes they will validate his industry.

"I have seen nothing, not one scintilla of evidence that it is not safe," Cobb said.

The California Health Hazard Assessment department will begin its own study in early November on crumb rubber, holding public workshops across the state. 

Pallone and other members of congress also sent a strong letter demanding answers and fresh studies on the issue last week.

Both activists and the turf council hope this is just the next step toward getting proof about cancer---one way or the other.

"That's why I think the government does need to step in. There's got to be a way where all those resources can go to one place," Griffin said.