BEWARE THE IDES OF MARCH. Nevada is a great place to dwell if you don’t have to breathe. As my old football coach once noted, breathing is voluntary. Today’s fearless leaders are like my coach. Only worse.
FOWL BALL. That fluttery squawking you hear is Sparks City Hall playing chicken with your kids’ lives. The chickens are now coming home to roost.
Don’t say I didn’t warn you.
Last week, I heard from subscribers from Oregon to Massachusetts about being eight years ahead of the curve warning of brain damage and cancer at places like Sparks’ Golden Eagle Park.
The biggies have finally joined the lonely Sparks Tribune in sounding the alarm about crumb rubber artificial turf.
The scandal finally gained traction after the Guardian of London/UK expanded on an investigation by the Philadelphia Inquirer. Six Philadelphia Phillies baseball stars have died young on the same toxic turf I’ve been screaming about since 2015.
The plastic blades of imitation grass are kept apart by ground-up used tires besotted with brain-damaging and cancer-causing chemicals. Tribune photographer John Byrne’s 2015 killer photo of a turf brusher at Golden Eagle is sickening. Despite the rubber crumbs, the carpet must frequently get fluffed because it mats. Byrne’s photo shows some poor lout driving a thing that looks like a big lawnmower. A miasma of black dust surrounds the maskless man.
The turf is especially dangerous to children and teens.
“Recycled tires can contain heavy metals, benzene, volatile organic compounds and other carcinogens, and a growing number of US municipalities and states have banned or proposed banning them…(they) are linked to cancer, liver problems, thyroid issues, birth defects, kidney disease, decreased immunity and other serious health problems,” the Guardian reported.
Sparks brags that Golden Eagle has the largest expanse of the stuff in North America, more than 1.4 million square feet. Another public relations coup for the city. We are now competitive with the likes of Love Canal New York, Flint Michigan and Palestine Ohio.
The city has invested over $30 million in Golden Eagle and has bragged about it being a fantastic tourism and revenue producer. But at what true cost?
I have flat out warned parents not to let their kids play there. City hall has sat shiva.
In September 2015, Yale University researchers released a report revealing nearly 100 chemicals in the turf samples they analyzed. The study also revealed 11 carcinogens, as well as 20 known skin irritants.
“I knew there were heavy metals in them but I never expected 96 chemicals,” said Nancy Alderman, president of Environment and Human Health, Inc., a nonprofit organization that commissioned the Yale study.
I fear continued indifference.
All such stories carry the same asterisk: Cause and effect for cancer clusters is almost impossible to prove in court so the bad guys get away every time. That happened with the Fallon, Nevada, cancer cluster of 25 years ago. Probable cause was a chemical stew: a tool manufacturing plant called Kennametal which spews tungsten toxics into the air; massive amounts of farm pesticides sprayed everywhere in the dust of that valley; and the jet exhausts and fuel spills at the Naval Air Station Fallon Top Gun school. No single source could be 100 percent confirmed, so the guilty all walked away leaving 20 kids dead.
But now our national religion, sports, has been impacted.
Ex-Phillies pitcher David West succumbed last May joining some of the greatest stars of the game in their day: Ken Brett (2003), Tug McGraw (2004), John Vukovich (2007), Johnny Oates (2004) and Darren Daulton (2017) have all died from brain cancer.
The Inquirer reported that the rate of brain cancer among former Phillies who played at Veterans Stadium from 1971-2003 “is about three times the average rate among adult men.” Sounds like Fallon.
Crumb rubber turf infects just about every high school athletic field in the region, including Sparks’ Reed High, the Jan Evans juvenile center and UNR’s Mackay Stadium, Wolf Pack and Peccole parks. When former UNR baseball player Don Weir, Jr., donated big bucks to his alma mater, I asked the UNR media machine if they were planning to resurface the fields with crumb rubber. I’m still awaiting an answer lo, these many years later.
Before the plague, I drove up to McQueen High to see crumb rubber for myself. I talked to several shamefaced coaches who knew the dangers but could not or did not dare voice their opinions. I wonder how many of the ballplayers I saw are now afflicted.
The Nevada Legislature is now in session and should immediately move to ban crumb rubber turf. Is any lawmaker willing to fight an archaic system which dictates “our session is only 120 days every two years. We never have time to do much more than copy other states.”
Don’t wait. Keep your kids from playing on artificial turf. PLEASE.
FAIR WARNING: NEVADA’S KILLER HITS JUST KEEP ON COMING. SOON: The Dayton, Nev., wooden power pole pickling plant gets an EPA reprieve; Nevada doctors try instant replay of their 2004 shuck to keep themselves immune from malpractice lawsuits; why Nevada doesn’t care if your house blows up in an earthquake; and only God can help our cops and first responders injured on the job because the system won’t.
Stay safe, get vaxxed and pray for the children Palestine Ohio, Ukraine and 63 other currently war-torn lands.
Be well. Raise hell. / Esté bien. Haga infierno.
Andrew Quarantino Barbano is a 54-year Nevadan and editor of NevadaLabor.com, ConsumerCoalitionv.org and DoctorLawyerWatch.com/ Barbwire by Barbano has originated in the Tribune since 1988. E-mail barbano@frontpage.reno.nv.us
BUG BUG says
Really Andrew
I played softball since the early 1990’s and there were no artificial grounds
I am still alive
Those who you stated have dies did not die from the “rubber” fields
Probably more like drug’s PFD’Setc
I cannot say but I can say that I have played up there and they are some of the best maintained and fields
I don think playing ounce a week or even a weekend tournament would effect my health
Get real and go back to playing put put golf