Wooden Houses, Plastic Fields?

To the editor: You don't have to look very far to find controversy around artificial turf fields. Between the lawsuits, premature failures, news-making injuries, and the growing body of environmental research, it's hard to understand why this is still being presented as a straightforward upgrade. All you have to do is Google "artificial turf field after a storm" or "after five years," and what comes up is lumpy, wrecked carpet. That's what we're being asked to spend millions on, buried inside a well-meaning revamp of Vito Capizzo Stadium. In doing so, we are being asked to degrade our aquifer with plastics, potentially harm our children, strain our budget, and damage our environment, all in one fell swoop.

The turf portion of this project, unfortunately and inextricably tied to many sensible upgrades, skips over something I really thought this community cared about: Authenticity. Nantucket has an entire nonprofit dedicated to protecting the integrity of our historic interiors from insensitive renovation. We have a Historic District Commission. We have a Preservation Trust. We have building codes that govern everything from the color of your front door to what your business sign can be made of. I'll give you a hint: it can't be plastic. We have fought to protect cobblestones, old homes, even solar panels from viewsheds. We pride ourselves on protecting history, land, water, and public health. This proposal asks us to make a glaring exception. The same community that would never be allowed to put plastic siding on their home is now being encouraged to allow our children to play on a massively complex petrochemical-derived product that will sit directly over the Zone II wellhead recharge area for our sole-source aquifer.

Some people have argued that because children are already playing on contaminated ground, synthetic turf is an upgrade. That logic doesn't make sense. Adding a new source of exposure doesn't cancel out the old ones, it compounds them. Compounding, by the way, is something PFAS and microplastics do extraordinarily well. Microplastics are now in human lung tissue, brain tissue, in placentas, and in the blood of newborns. The argument that existing contamination justifies adding more is a misguided excuse, and it's how many environmental disasters we are dealing with get the green light. Municipal PFAS filtration systems run into the millions, and currently, there is no viable technology anywhere to filter microplastics from a water supply once they're in it.

If the goal is to develop elite athletes, why are these same athletes starting to refuse turf? The vast majority of major league NFL players now want grass. Their union has even called synthetic turf an "unsafe working condition". FIFA bans it from the World Cup entirely. Thierry Henry, Zlatan, and Beckham all refused to play on it. Our own Mass General found in a 2024 study that soccer players are 60% more likely to tear an ACL on turf than on grass. Professional athletes, unions, leagues, and their doctors are starting to agree on this, yet the school is proposing to give our kids the surface that their heroes are actively fighting to leave behind?

On the testing side, here's what the testing actually covered: EPA Method 1633, which identifies 40 PFAS compounds, a tiny fraction of the 12,000 to 15,000 PFAS compounds that scientists have identified.

Here's what wasn't done:

Total Organic Fluorine (TOF) testing at one part per million. A total organic fluorine test can show the presence of PFAS that individual compound testing can miss entirely. If you need to know whether a product is PFAS-free, this test is the place to start, not the one to kick down the road.

SPLP testing (Synthetic Precipitation Leaching Procedure) for leachate from the turf under rainfall conditions. The central concern is not just what's in the turf, but what migrates into groundwater from its many surfaces and substances. Without this test, we don't know.

VOC testing. The manufacturer claims their Brock infill reduces surface temperature by 20 percent. On an average August day in Nantucket, that still leaves the surface approaching 155 degrees, off-gassing directly where children are playing.

Heavy metals testing. Synthetic turf pigments and backing materials commonly contain lead, zinc, and cadmium. Heavy metals don't break down. They accumulate in soil, in groundwater, and in the bodies of living things.

On the broader AT front, Massachusetts lawmakers are currently considering five separate pieces of legislation targeting synthetic turf. S.2187 would prohibit state agencies and municipalities from contracting for artificial turf fields containing plastic or PFAS, and S.624 calls for a 36-month moratorium on all synthetic turf installation statewide. Two additional bills explicitly name school properties and residents from more than 35 Mass communities are pushing for these. To say it plainly: Nantucket would be voting to install at the same time that the state is actively reconsidering whether artificial turf installations should happen at all.

I was heartened to hear that every parent who has spoken out for turf really actually wants real grass. Yet according to the Nantucket Land and Water Council, no complete comparison of natural grass versus synthetic turf has been put in front of this community. No side-by-side assessment of cost, feasibility, or risk. Why are we failing at this? This seems like the reasonable place to start. The town and the Land Bank already own hundreds of acres we have paid for and protected. Pair that with the many hundreds of landscaping professionals on this island, with the equipment, and the expertise. And organic grass maintenance models exist in our own state. The city of Springfield has been running successful organic field management since 2014, doubling its program to 12 fields. A consultation and perhaps organic implementation across a would cost a fraction of the massive costs to purchase, maintain, and eventually dispose of a microplastic-shedding carpet with no guarantee of its actual longevity, just to do it all over again in a few years.

The choice we should have been offered is not between turf and a dirt lot. It should be between turf and genuinely excellent grass fields, ones that sequester carbon, support soil health, biodiversity, and pollinators. Ones that filter stormwater rather than shedding it, stays cool, and provides a soft landing. Before asking this community to fund something this consequential, the school should take stock of our already abundant resources in this realm. The people, the land, the expertise, and the appropriated tax dollars are already on the island.

Every parent wants the best for their child. But wanting what's best and being told what's best by the multi-national companies profiting from the answer are not the same thing. The petrochemical industry has convinced well-meaning communities that after hundreds of years of being perfectly fit for purpose, natural grass is no longer the "preferred surface", and that the answer is to blanket our fields in plastic. That is shortsighted, environmentally irresponsible, and out of character for an island that defends historical integrity, real materials, and authentic values at every opportunity.

I strongly urge a NO vote on Article 12, and ask that our collective efforts continue toward working on a solution that keeps Nantucket natural, authentic, safe, and sustainable for this generation and every future generation lucky enough to call this place home.

Leah Mojer
Founder, Nantucket Litter Derby & Nantucket Wildscapes Initiative