On any given day, children play in the dirt area at the center of Bennett Park in Washington Heights, happily digging away.
Rachel Graham Kagan’s 2-year-old daughter is often among them, though possibly not for much longer — if the Parks Department moves forward with plans to replace part of the dirt section with a multipurpose artificial turf field.
“How can they in good conscience put this stuff down knowing there’s PFAS in it?” said Kyla Bennett, science policy director at the watchdog group Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility and one of the researchers who discovered PFAS in turf in Massachusetts in 2019. “It boggles my mind. Children will be exposed to this PFAS. These are carcinogens. What are they thinking?”