“You are literally laying down acres of plastic, which means that you are destroying that habitat, that soil for any kind of insect life or wildlife,” says Bennett, New England director of Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER) and PEER’s director of science policy. “It’s worse than putting pavement down. It is creating a heat island, particularly in warm places like the south.”
As more and more cities around the country pull out natural grass and replace it with synthetic turf to cut maintenance costs and provide durable fields, environmentalists have raised concerns about contaminants and chemicals in the material. A 2015 study by Gaboury Benoit, a professor of environmental chemistry and engineering at Yale University, found 96 chemicals, including possible carcinogens, in the rubber pieces in artificial turf fields. Other studies have found the presence of heavy metals.