Recycled Rubber: Separating Facts From Fiction
The UN Secretary General recently called climate change "code red for humanity," highlighting that the world only has a few years to mitigate the potentially disastrous impacts of increasing temperatures. While much of the discussion about a transition to a clean, circular economy has focused on sweeping government action to reduce emissions, ensuring a dynamic recycling industry can continue to operate will be a critical part of any solution to climate change. Recyclers have already been a driving force behind reducing pollution and emissions, and will be essential to decarbonizing the economy.
One of the largest segments of the American recycling industry is rubber recyclers—who produce crumb rubber from scrap tires—a material regularly used to create artificial turf fields, playground surfaces, hospital floors, rubberized asphalt, and other consumer products. Each year, rubber recyclers keep hundreds of millions of tires from being dumped in forests, streams, and parks, and recycling just four tires can significantly reduce CO2 emissions. However, some want to endanger this sustainable industry, focusing on a discredited, non-scientific "study" to tarnish the reputation of rubber recyclers and lobby the government to enact anti-recycling policies. Policymakers must not choose discredited pseudoscience over data-backed evidence. The government should be focused on implementing science-driven policies to encourage emissions-reducing recycling and not rely on a flawed study.
The most prominent study that claims recycled rubber has negative health effects has been disproven. In 2014, a soccer coach publicized a list of former soccer players who developed cancers and claimed synthetic turf caused cancer. This list was only collected based on the coach's personal connections. Despite its lack of scientific and statistical rigor, the list has been used by several jurisdictions as the impetus to start investigating recycled rubber.
A 2017 study commissioned by the Washington State Department of Health investigating the coach's list concluded that there is no scientific evidence to suggest that recycled rubber or synthetic turf raised cancer risks. The Washington state study found that half of the players on the list practiced on dirt or grass fields 70–74% of the time. Crucially, the Department of Health, through a rigorous data analysis, concluded that the players on the list had a lower incidence of cancer than the Washington state average. Despite the Washington State Department of Health's clear conclusions, many still rely on the faulty list to attack crumb rubber. Furthermore, both the CDC and EPA have found that many of the chemicals people claim are specific to synthetic turf are also commonly found in natural grass fields.
(Source: Peterson, Lemay, Shubin, and Pueitt, "Comprehensive multipathway risk assessment of chemicals associated with recycled ("crumb") rubber in synthetic turf fields," Environmental Research, January 2018)
Other studies conducted by academics have found that recycled rubber is safe. A 2018 paper from Michael Peterson, a Duke-trained environmental toxicologist, found that artificial turf fields have comparable or lower cancer risk levels than natural soil fields. Another paper from 2014 by Oregon Health and Science University professor Archie Bleyer found not only that claims of artificial turf causing cancer are unsubstantiated, but also that reducing exercise among children by limiting access to playgrounds and fields with recycled rubber could increase cancer rates later in life. Policymakers should listen to the academics weighing in on this issue rather than an incorrect "study."
These false narratives are endangering a sustainable industry that should be a model for a decarbonized U.S. economy. Rubber recyclers make our environment cleaner by reducing tire dumping, keeping 110 million tires out of landfills and forests each year. Furthermore, recycling just four tires reduces CO2 emissions by 323 pounds. Rubber recyclers also benefit the economy, creating nearly 8,000 jobs nationwide and paying out $500 million in employee wages each year.
Rubber recyclers make a variety of everyday products, with crumb rubber's durability leading to numerous positive and unique applications. For example, recycled rubber playground surfaces are widely usable, accessible, and ADA-compliant—a feature that grass and other industrial surfaces lack. The benefits of recycled rubber are measurable and plentiful, while attacks have been based on only anecdotes.
Policymakers should not let misinformation cripple an industry that is crucial for the environment and for our economy. Rubber recyclers are just a small part of a wider ecosystem of recyclers working to reduce waste and make our country less polluted. The industry is a model for sustainable solutions that benefit all. If the U.S. can't agree on the science and data underpinning a group with as clear a case as rubber recyclers, it's unlikely our country can do what it takes to effectively combat the climate crisis.