Issue link: http://educator.cta.org/i/726969
New state and federal studies roll out State Sen. Jerry Hill (D-San Mateo) was so concerned that he asked the Legislature to press the "pause" button twice to stop facilities from installing new fields until the state conducted a comprehensive study on the safety of crumb rubber. He was rejected twice. His third watered-down legislative attempt would have required communities to publicly discuss alter- natives to crumb rubber before installing them. at was also defeated. e crumb-rubber industry spent more than $6 mil- lion lobbying to defeat these bills, according to CALmatters, a nonprofit, nonpartisan media organization. However, in November 2015, California legislators decided to spend $3 million to study the link between cancer and artifi- cial turf. e study is being conducted by California's Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment and is expected to be completed by June 2018. In January, two U.S. senators asked President Obama to launch a federal study about whether crumb rubber is safe for students. Sens. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) and Bill Nelson (D-Fla.), the top two Democrats on the Senate Commerce Commit- tee, were alarmed at recent reports and asked for further scrutiny of crumb rubber. In February, it was announced that three agen- cies — the EPA, the Consumer Product Safety Commission, and the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry — would participate in a $2 million federal research project and release a report by the end of this year. While the state and federal agencies study the safety of crumb rubber, California will continue to award millions of dollars in subsidies to schools and cities for installing crumb-rubber fields for children to play on. What could the impact of the new studies be? If the fields are deemed safe, school officials can breathe a sigh of relief and continue business as usual. If health hazards are con- firmed, there may be outrage and a demand for schools to remove the fields, which would be costly and disruptive, to say the least. Beard , the Glendale coach , hopes that new research will finally reveal whether the turf is safe or not. "I believe we need to make informed decisions based on the upcoming studies. If th e studies prove th ere i s a correlation b etween di sease and synthetic fields, we have an obligation to do something. Research is critical. Parents and kids have a right to know. Igno- rance is not bliss." 21 September 2016 Several state and federal studies are now under way to determine the safety of crumb rubber fields.