Thursday, December 13, 2007

Turf hearing today

Ten years after artificial turf began to appear in parks here, the City Council will hold its first oversight hearing on the subject this morning.

While the Parks Dept. says 77 synthetic-turf fields have been installed since 1997, all but a handful were put down under the Bloomberg administration. Another 23 are in design and construction. The city claims turf is more cost-effective than grass.


Toxic turf concerns get Council hearing

The vast majority of these fields belong to the new breed of artificial turf, composed of plastic blades poking out of rubber pellets made from ground up tires.

“I wouldn’t rip up the fields,” [Mount Sinai’s Dr. Philip] Landrigan said. “But let’s put a moratorium on new installation until we have more data.”

8 comments:

Anonymous said...

Some say that this rash of incurable staph infections originated from cuts and scrapes on this artificial turf.

Could it be that the $150 to $200 million price tag is the kickback bank for politicians who will kill for their cut of that money?

David M. Quintana said...

I attended the latter part of the hearing - I got the sense that the committee was leaning towards placing a moratorium on future installations until further health and environmental studies are conducted on the various artificial turfs in question...

verdi said...

There's something really sick
about all of this.

Imagine a PARKS department....
that's SUPPOSED to be an ADVOCATE
for all thinks NATURAL.....
going PLASTIC !!!

Gag....let's just call it "Shitty City....
and forget all of this hypocrisy already.

What ever happened to "Fun City"?
Anyone remember that old 1970s PR hype?

Anonymous said...

Astroturf doesn't need to be fertilized, not that there's any shortage of shit about with all of the crap they spew from their rabid maws.

Anonymous said...

Solution to this problem and the city's endorsement of installing this toxic turf?

Install it in place of the natural tuff in Sheep Meadows, Central Park.

Anonymous said...

Hey David,

That's one scary photo of Hillary Rotten Clinton.

Anonymous said...

Parks Commissioner Adrian Benepe should be charged with gross negligence for what NYC Parks have become under his so-called leadership.

Anonymous said...

Has Hillary resorted to dragging Bill around pleading for votes in a beard? Or is Hillary going for a new gritty type of beau?