“Portsmouth is a really good example of [how] it’s really hard to put the horse back in the barn after the doors are open,” said Kyla Bennett, director of science policy at Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility, who has worked with a number of environmental groups battling turf fields in their communities. “The moral of the story in Portsmouth is it is much easier to investigate this stuff first, before you put it in, than it is to deal with the fallout.”
Three years ago, when Portsmouth was considering how to restore its athletic field complex, The Boston Globe reported that tests of athletic turf in Franklin, Mass., contained organic fluorine. Portsmouth is no stranger to PFAS, which contaminate part of the city’s water supply due to the use of aqueous firefighting foam at a former Air Force base there.
