Speaker 1: From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies. History is
Speaker 1: riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or
Speaker 1: learn this stuff they don't want you to know. A
Speaker 1: production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2: Hello, welcome back to the show. My name is Matt,
Speaker 2: my name is Nol.
Speaker 3: They call me Ben. We're joined as always with our
Speaker 3: super producer Paul. Mission control decands. Most importantly, you are
Speaker 3: you are here, and that makes this the stuff they
Speaker 3: don't want you to know. Weirdly enough, this episode is
Speaker 3: very baseball centric at the beginning. But look, if you
Speaker 3: don't love baseball, if you're not a baseball nut like
Speaker 3: our pal Max Williams, never fear. Don't let that dissuade you. Because,
Speaker 3: fellow conspiracy realists, you may recall in an earlier part
Speaker 3: of our weekly Strange News segment, Matt, you brought a
Speaker 3: pretty disturbing story about some revelations related to baseball and
Speaker 3: long term health consequences, well some possibilities.
Speaker 2: Right, there's no We came away from that episode with
Speaker 2: the understanding that there is no proof that there's a
Speaker 2: link between what we're going to talk about today and
Speaker 2: that specific type of brain cancer.
Speaker 3: But right.
Speaker 2: It doesn't look good.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's like playing It's like playing clue, you know,
Speaker 3: in the board game Clue, where you have to have
Speaker 3: three cards so you can name the person, the weapon,
Speaker 3: and the place. Yeah, they are about two cards in here.
Speaker 3: I would say two and a half. And that's just
Speaker 3: being diplomatic.
Speaker 4: Two toes down perhaps, yeah, not ten toes.
Speaker 2: But what we found in the research, like the full
Speaker 2: research for this episode, is that it goes way beyond baseball.
Speaker 3: Yes, the implications are far past the stadium. Here are
Speaker 3: the facts. First, astro turf. It's a cool name. It
Speaker 3: sounds a vaguely space related. But what is this stuff?
Speaker 3: It might be interesting for a lot of us listening
Speaker 3: today to learn that AstroTurf is a brand name. It
Speaker 3: is one example of a thing that exists under multiple manufacturers. Right,
Speaker 3: Astroturf's actually a proprietary eponym. We're talking about this a
Speaker 3: little bit off air. We were naming a couple. Paul
Speaker 3: shouted out popsicle from our brain Stuff days And what
Speaker 3: is a proprietary eponym?
Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean it's basically it's a brand. Essentially, it's
Speaker 4: the name of a product that ends up being so
Speaker 4: ubiquitously known that it kind of becomes the stand in
Speaker 4: for all other you know, sort of I guess you
Speaker 4: could call them imitators. But it really does become sort
Speaker 4: of a case of parallel thinking where the product is
Speaker 4: so ubiquitous that probably it was almost invented simultaneous by
Speaker 4: multiple parties, but the one with the name that stuck
Speaker 4: is the one that kind of, you know, became the one,
Speaker 4: and then everyone else is sort of refers to the
Speaker 4: other ones by that same name, like xerox, for example,
Speaker 4: which is just you know, photo copying, but it is
Speaker 4: that people will to say, run a xerox of this,
Speaker 4: or even google googling it.
Speaker 3: Google it.
Speaker 4: Or coke in some places just refers to a carbonated drink.
Speaker 2: You know, I need a band aid.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's what. That's a great example. I will I
Speaker 3: will see. I will share one example, an old war
Speaker 3: story that Matt and Nola you guys have already heard.
Speaker 2: Uh.
Speaker 3: I first ran into proprietary eponyms while working on a
Speaker 3: show called Stuff of Genius, a kids show about inventors.
Speaker 3: Turns out, you, yeah, that's right. I forgot. Gosh, how
Speaker 3: many shows have we worked on together, Matt?
Speaker 4: A lot, a.
Speaker 3: Lot, Yeah, so so Matt was doing the hard work
Speaker 3: on stuff genius, and I was also there, and the
Speaker 3: Tyler and Tyler Klaying Yes, Tyler Klayg a good friend
Speaker 3: of the show who actually he's kind of a Jerry.
Speaker 3: He doesn't appear on air that often. But yeah, so
Speaker 3: I first at least learned about proprietary eponyms when I
Speaker 3: learned that the makers of Frisbee are pretty litigious, a
Speaker 3: lot less fun, a lot less fun than maybe the
Speaker 3: image would imply. If it is not a Frisbee brand Frisbee,
Speaker 3: it can only be called a flying disc and they
Speaker 3: will find you.
Speaker 2: So.
Speaker 3: AstroTurf, then, is the most popular example the street name
Speaker 3: for a product, a kind of product, a genre of
Speaker 3: product that exists all over the Western world. It's weird
Speaker 3: because we can get in the origin story of inventions.
Speaker 3: It can be kind of tough to suss out who
Speaker 3: made what because to your point, Oh, there's so much
Speaker 3: parallel thinking that can occur. People like good inventors identify
Speaker 3: a problem and then try to reverse engineer right work
Speaker 3: back from the problem towards the solution. So it shouldn't
Speaker 3: surprise us that there there are a couple of foggy
Speaker 3: parts about the AstroTurf or synthetic turf origin story, but
Speaker 3: we do know it was not originally named AstroTurf.
Speaker 2: No, it was called kim Grass. Kim Yum. That just
Speaker 2: sounds great. Give me what I want to frolic on
Speaker 2: some kim grass sounds.
Speaker 3: That was their original motto too, right, Matt kim Grass Yum.
Speaker 2: Yeah yeah, I think so.
Speaker 3: Yeah, So we got these, uh, we got these. One
Speaker 3: story goes there are these two dudes, James im Faria
Speaker 3: and Robert T. Wright. They worked out of a place
Speaker 3: called kim chem strand chem Grass. Get it.
Speaker 2: Well, yeah, well it has to do with synthetic fibers, right,
Speaker 2: and creating synthetic fibers became a big deal back in
Speaker 2: the sixties.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, oh my gosh, did so much for workouts,
Speaker 3: and synthetics fibers still play a big role, I guess
Speaker 3: in gym based internet selfies, right.
Speaker 2: Yeah, well, way more things than you could possibly imagine.
Speaker 2: There are synthetic types of fibers that end up in
Speaker 2: those products.
Speaker 3: And they're tremendously useful and versatile. The issue is that
Speaker 3: they're also in the grand scheme of things, a very
Speaker 3: new kind of endeavor for humans. Kim Strand may be
Speaker 3: recognizable to some people. I don't know who. You're very
Speaker 3: plugged in if you already knew this, because we didn't.
Speaker 3: Kim Strand was a subsidiary of Monsanto, who is back.
Speaker 3: Monsanto rides again in stuff they don't want you to know.
Speaker 3: And they first put this stuff in a school in
Speaker 3: Rhode Island back in the sixties. That was like their
Speaker 3: test field.
Speaker 2: In nineteen sixty four.
Speaker 4: Yeah, and schools the ultimate cam testing fields.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah. But then in nineteen sixty six that's when
Speaker 2: it ended up in Texas where why we know it
Speaker 2: as astro turf.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and want a shout out David Cheney, who is
Speaker 3: also often mentioned as the inventor of AstroTurf. Some other
Speaker 3: manufacturers cite him. There's a Sports Illustrated article about him.
Speaker 3: They say that he's the guy responsible for creating this stuff.
Speaker 3: The way they put it, is responsible for indoor Major
Speaker 3: League Baseball. Millions of welcome Matt's origin story aside, Matt,
Speaker 3: You're absolutely right. The big moment, the real debut comes
Speaker 3: in Houston, Texas, nineteen sixty six at the Astrodome. The
Speaker 3: Astrodome at the time is cutting edge it's like that.
Speaker 3: It's like the beginning of that Simpson's monorail episode. Everybody
Speaker 3: wants to have an astrodome. It's an indoor stadium, you
Speaker 3: know what I mean. Finally humanity has Humanity has conquered
Speaker 3: the gods of weather and said, we don't care what
Speaker 3: the environment's like. We're gonna play till the ninth inning.
Speaker 2: Well, it's human engineering. It's beautiful human engineering at work. Right.
Speaker 2: We need a way to have these baseball games, like
Speaker 2: maybe in a pure way. It's pure baseball, right, you
Speaker 2: don't got to worry about getting rained out, you don't
Speaker 2: got to worry about super crazy hot days when you're
Speaker 2: out there playing on the field. Let's do it indoors.
Speaker 2: So like that's They solved a ton of problem by
Speaker 2: putting a dome on top of the stadium, but then
Speaker 2: it created more problems.
Speaker 4: Yeah, like these things often do well.
Speaker 2: And one of the major problems was they in order
Speaker 2: to light that stadium right, like correctly, to get enough
Speaker 2: light inside that dome, you had to have crazy strong
Speaker 2: lights on the dome all over it.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and then they had to they actually had to
Speaker 3: step some of that back and pint some of the
Speaker 3: ceiling lighting area because the lights were too bright for
Speaker 3: the players to see the balls coming down.
Speaker 2: And well, yeah, imagine the sun is one point of
Speaker 2: light in the sky, right and it may not be
Speaker 2: directly above you while you're playing. Sometimes it is, but
Speaker 2: even then it's one point of light. Now you've got
Speaker 2: like dozens.
Speaker 3: Now you're in the spotlight no matter where you look.
Speaker 3: And they also had a problem with the grass. This
Speaker 3: thing that I love that you point out the architecture
Speaker 3: reminds me of my favorite architecture quote, which is, gosh,
Speaker 3: I can't remember who said it, but someone once described
Speaker 3: architecture's frozen poetry. Ooh yeah, And I think that's a
Speaker 3: really beautiful way to think about it. And things like
Speaker 3: the stadium, these massive marvels of human engineering. They really are.
Speaker 3: There is poetry to them. But there's also a really
Speaker 3: tough landscaping situation, which is nuts, but it makes sense
Speaker 3: because they had such a hard time keeping the grass
Speaker 3: growing and this enormous indoor cutting edge stadium that by
Speaker 3: the second half of the nineteen sixty five baseball season
Speaker 3: they literally said, Paul, beat me here. They said, get
Speaker 3: We're just gonna have to paint the dead grass green
Speaker 3: because we can't grow it. And of course, if you
Speaker 3: have ever played baseball, you know the grass the field
Speaker 3: itself is a big part of how you play. The
Speaker 3: game's right of dreams apparently.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 4: And chemicals.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so they tried a new option. They tried several
Speaker 3: different types of grass. None of it would take, so
Speaker 3: they resurfaced the field with chem grass from your friends
Speaker 3: at Kimstrand, the subsidiary of Monsanto Global chem Yeah, which
Speaker 3: itself is probably a subsidiary of Illumination Global Unlimited. There's
Speaker 3: a lot of questions still out there, right, So what
Speaker 3: was kim grass?
Speaker 4: Well, kim grass is essentially a carpet of fake grass.
Speaker 4: You can transport it to like these roles, you know.
Speaker 4: So essentially it is a carpet of half inch thermoplastic
Speaker 4: fibers that's attached to a rubber mat and then laid
Speaker 4: on top of a base. In this case it would
Speaker 4: be an asphalt base. Chemstrand was smart, you know, in
Speaker 4: their branding play here when they thought of this as
Speaker 4: an opportunity to rename it based on this new use.
Speaker 4: Because you know, we have the team obviously that named
Speaker 4: the Astros and the stadium and all of that, but
Speaker 4: also Astro just has that kind of thing of the
Speaker 4: future vibe, right, So they rename the stuff from the
Speaker 4: maybe more accurate and possibly ill advised named Kemgrass to
Speaker 4: Astro Turf.
Speaker 3: Get it.
Speaker 2: Well, yeah, it makes a ton of sense from a
Speaker 2: branding perspective, right, from a marketing perspective, from a company
Speaker 2: that's like, oh, this is kind of working, guys, I
Speaker 2: think we could probably do this again like a lot.
Speaker 4: Let's create an association with a pre existing beloved brand.
Speaker 2: No, right, guys, this is a moment in like history history.
Speaker 2: So in the news this thing. People are talking about
Speaker 2: this in the New York Times. Oh wow, brand new,
Speaker 2: brand new turf going in and it's a stuff of
Speaker 2: the future. Everyone look at this Astro too, which.
Speaker 3: Is also I think, was it stuff from the future.
Speaker 3: We we had another show, yeah, yeah, yeah yeah.
Speaker 2: Where by the way, Paul worked on stuff of genius.
Speaker 2: I don't know if you guys, remember I.
Speaker 4: Have a video editor.
Speaker 3: Did I get some reputation for not acknowledging people's work.
Speaker 2: No, no, no, I just totally forget well.
Speaker 3: Shout out to Paul. Yes, Paul is an absolute mastermind.
Speaker 3: And Paul's Paul's parents, many many people, many people's parents
Speaker 3: in the show today, as well as some of our
Speaker 3: fellow conspiracy realists listening now, may have been alive when
Speaker 3: this news hit, and it was nationwide, it was syndicated,
Speaker 3: It was a big deal. It was very Jetsons, it's
Speaker 3: very futuristic. Also, it's a way better name than Keem Grass.
Speaker 3: You know what were their other mottos. Their first one
Speaker 3: was young and then their second one was kim Grass
Speaker 3: to pay for the ground, like they needed the help
Speaker 3: with an AstroTurf was there. It also looked like it's
Speaker 3: saw so many problems. You're a stadium owner and you say, okay,
Speaker 3: there's an upfront cost here, but over X amounts of years,
Speaker 3: I won't have to pay for near as much maintenance. Right,
Speaker 3: So this is a long term investment for me, and
Speaker 3: I want my stadium to stay around as long as possible.
Speaker 3: So it becomes incredibly common in indoor and outdoor stadiums
Speaker 3: all through the seventies. It goes beyond the borders of
Speaker 3: the US. It's in Canada, it's in Toronto, and well.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Major League Baseball really really bought into the stuff.
Speaker 2: There were a ton of brand new stadiums that were
Speaker 2: built with this this turf, artificial turf laid down there,
Speaker 2: and it was again touted as, oh man, this is
Speaker 2: a great new thing. We got.
Speaker 3: This is how the pros play, right. And as of
Speaker 3: twenty twenty three, there are more than twelve thousand artificial
Speaker 3: turf playing fields of some sort the United States, and
Speaker 3: according to a trade group that we'll get into a
Speaker 3: little bit later called the Synthetic Turf Council, more than
Speaker 3: twelve hundred or so or installed every year in recent years,
Speaker 3: definitely twenty thirteen, and the pattern seems to have continued
Speaker 3: up until at least the pandemic. The idea for ask
Speaker 3: Returf comes from a place called the Educational Facilities Laboratory
Speaker 3: and nonprofit and they said, we want to help people learn.
Speaker 3: We want to create and foster environments that set kids
Speaker 3: up for success. And they've found a really interesting study
Speaker 3: that showed if you're a military recruit in the fifties
Speaker 3: and you come from a rural area, you will tend
Speaker 3: to be more physically fit than recruits from urban areas
Speaker 3: from big cities. And this is back before the majority
Speaker 3: of humans lived in big cities, so it's a little
Speaker 3: easier to study this. This this caused someone to urge
Speaker 3: Monsanto to create a grass like surface that you could
Speaker 3: lay down in city lots so kids have more places
Speaker 3: to play. And you can see stuff like this in
Speaker 3: playgrounds all across big cities, right Like, if you've ever
Speaker 3: walked around New York, then you will see that kind
Speaker 3: of green patch with the playground equipment and it's not
Speaker 3: real grass, right, but it might be grass like. That's
Speaker 3: what they were aiming for. They thought it was the
Speaker 3: best thing. It's the turf for the future. A lot
Speaker 3: of actual baseball players, because remember this started in Major
Speaker 3: League Baseball. They didn't dig it. They were concerned.
Speaker 2: Yeah, well, one of the biggest problems is when you're
Speaker 2: playing baseball, often you dive for things.
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 2: A lot of that is when you're sliding, you know,
Speaker 2: if you're running around the bases doing stuff like that.
Speaker 2: But if you're in the outfield, you know that you're
Speaker 2: going to be diving for balls every once in a while.
Speaker 2: And when you do something like that in your arm,
Speaker 2: like you're let's say your elbow scratches along the grass
Speaker 2: or something on the ground, you're gonna get cut up
Speaker 2: a little bit. Right, It may not be crazy bad,
Speaker 2: but you might get cut up a little bit, a
Speaker 2: little bruising, but if you're on this artificial turf. The
Speaker 2: baseball players started noticing that they were getting what was
Speaker 2: akin to rugburn, like really really bad rugburn anytime they
Speaker 2: would dive for anything.
Speaker 4: Well, I also have to ask, I mean, you know
Speaker 4: any you know, any any league play type you know,
Speaker 4: sport where yeah, you ultimately are like playing to get
Speaker 4: into playoffs and then some sort of championship. You know,
Speaker 4: is it consistency important, like in terms of like the
Speaker 4: venues where you play, And couldn't having astro turf on
Speaker 4: some stadiums and not others be considered either just kind
Speaker 4: of like skewing the figures a little bit.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's that could be a concern. And you know,
Speaker 3: every uh, every every stadium seat umpire would raise that
Speaker 3: and other variables to explain the outcome of a game,
Speaker 3: especially if they're team lost. Sorry, folks, But the issue
Speaker 3: for the players was not just the rashes, the rugburn,
Speaker 3: the skids that these ballplayers are encountering. It's the fact
Speaker 3: that they never healed. At least that's what we heard
Speaker 3: from folks like former Astros outfielder Bob Watson. Turns out
Speaker 3: Bob may have been pretty prescient. This stuff was spreading
Speaker 3: to football stadiums as well. By nineteen eighty four, seventeen
Speaker 3: out of twenty eight NFL teams we're playing on artificial turf.
Speaker 3: And to your point, Nol about the importance of having
Speaker 3: a uniform field of play wherever you go, there's a
Speaker 3: pretty good argument you can make at this time where
Speaker 3: you say, Okay, now we're equalizing things. We need to
Speaker 3: make this turf ubiquitous. It needs to be the stand
Speaker 3: very convenient for the Globochems of the world.
Speaker 4: Oh yeah, a bit of a pain in the butt
Speaker 4: for Major League Baseball and anyone that's responsible for retrofitting
Speaker 4: all of these stadiums.
Speaker 3: I'm picturing. I'm picturing right now. I'm picturing the the
Speaker 3: AstroTurf folks making handshake deals and leaning in and saying
Speaker 3: Kim Grass the way that people said Hail Hydras exactly
Speaker 3: in those Marvel movies.
Speaker 4: Yeah, y'all, not to act like I'm oh, poor major
Speaker 4: League Baseball, but I mean, you know, anytime you have
Speaker 4: like a sea change like this where a new anything
Speaker 4: comes up and it becomes sort of the order of
Speaker 4: the day. So there are people who have to kind
Speaker 4: of kick into gear and figure out how to make
Speaker 4: the change without disrupting their season.
Speaker 2: Well, yeah, but guys, I think the biggest thing here's
Speaker 2: where you're talking about the handshake deal whispering in about
Speaker 2: Kim Grass there, because we learned pretty recently. Gosh, I
Speaker 2: guess it was a while ago now, but when the
Speaker 2: Braves got a new stadium in a different part of Atlanta,
Speaker 2: you guys remember this, or I guess not even really
Speaker 2: Atlanta in com County, And just how huge of a deal,
Speaker 2: how much money was to be made when a new
Speaker 2: stadium was being built. And in this time, just before
Speaker 2: AstroTurf starts making its way into other major leagues, there
Speaker 2: are a ton of brand new fields that are constructed
Speaker 2: with specifically chemgrass as one of the major selling points.
Speaker 3: Right. Yeah, now, it's a feature, you know, like you're
Speaker 3: buying a car. You could pony up a little extra
Speaker 3: and get the airbags or the power of steering, the
Speaker 3: seat belt and so on. Yes, if seat belts gave
Speaker 3: you cancer.
Speaker 2: Or hey, the tires, you can get the tower.
Speaker 3: Go oh god, yeah, we'll get to it.
Speaker 4: I was annoyed to find when I bought my certified
Speaker 4: pre owned Honda Fit that it did not come with
Speaker 4: floor mats.
Speaker 3: I know what later, what are you? What are you
Speaker 3: a billionaire? You're buying cars with floor mats? Chassa over here. Uh,
Speaker 3: I've been going through a thing where I referenced Monssa.
Speaker 4: I don't know who is, but I imagine it's a big
Speaker 4: wig of some For a long time, the the most
Speaker 4: wealthy dude in history went on a tour on the
Speaker 4: African continent back in the day and broke the economies
Speaker 4: of every place he went to, just because he rolled with.
Speaker 3: That much gold. Uh maybe a ridiculous history episode.
Speaker 2: Yeah, floor mats equals mansa musa.
Speaker 3: Yeah, all these fancy these floormat tycoons also artificial turf
Speaker 3: floor mats. Probably don't buy them. You'll see why. But
Speaker 3: but that is weird just to say on that for
Speaker 3: a second though, Like they no floor mats.
Speaker 4: Well, he didn't tell me either.
Speaker 3: I had.
Speaker 4: I got the car and then I looked in there
Speaker 4: and I was just like paper on the floor and
Speaker 4: there's no floor mats. And I called him, and the
Speaker 4: guy acted like I was asking the most ridiculous question.
Speaker 4: I was like, what do.
Speaker 3: Formats are of the car?
Speaker 2: Yeah?
Speaker 4: He said that actually, and uh and then yeah, I
Speaker 4: just ended up buying some kind of aftermarket ones or whatever.
Speaker 4: Floormats aren't like crazy expensive. I'm sorry at the end
Speaker 4: of ramp, they're not crazy expensive. But yeah, you think
Speaker 4: that would be stock.
Speaker 3: I do a double system. I get the kind of
Speaker 3: the shell floormat and then the fabric one on top
Speaker 3: of that. It's just easier to clean, ask no one.
Speaker 3: So anyhow, the uh, we'll talk about layers in a minute.
Speaker 3: That's that's kind of a segway anyway. So the NFL
Speaker 3: players also share the concerns of the baseball players when
Speaker 3: it comes to AstroTurf. They say, this surface is harder,
Speaker 3: We're getting more strains, we're getting more abrass than we
Speaker 3: did playing just on natural grass. And they also, this
Speaker 3: is interesting. I didn't see a ton of this popping
Speaker 3: up a lot. I don't know if you guys saw it,
Speaker 3: but there were complaints that abrasions from artificial turf also
Speaker 3: led to staff infections.
Speaker 2: H yeah, I remember reading that in the Science History
Speaker 2: Institute article you shared Ben that. Yeah, I think that's
Speaker 2: that's a common thing, like, because they don't heal very
Speaker 2: quickly for one reason or another, the infection can set in.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and it already feels a little creepy too, right
Speaker 3: that the idea that a braiding your skin on this
Speaker 3: surface will take longer to heal than if it were
Speaker 3: abraided on grass. It's just weird. This didn't phase the
Speaker 3: AstroTurf crew nor the other manufacturers entering the market. Were
Speaker 3: millions of dollars, millions acres acres of turf, and they
Speaker 3: were doing this by expanding past the major leaks, past
Speaker 3: the NFL. They were going to minor leaks. We're going
Speaker 3: to cope even high school teams, right, and with great
Speaker 3: success because they had this beautiful marketing, you know, play
Speaker 3: like the big boys essentially.
Speaker 2: Well, I think about it again. We talked about this before,
Speaker 2: but the number of Major League Baseball stadiums in this
Speaker 2: country is very tiny. The numbers NFL teams like twenty
Speaker 2: eight or something, I don't even know, thirty That that's
Speaker 2: just you can make your money that many times if
Speaker 2: you stay there in the big time, but if you
Speaker 2: move out to the small time. Every county in the
Speaker 2: country has multiple high schools, right, oh yeah.
Speaker 4: And if that's entially like farm teams and stuff too,
Speaker 4: you know, or like you know, minor league and.
Speaker 3: All of that, right, minor leagues are a big thing.
Speaker 3: That The the cool thing about this business model too,
Speaker 3: if we're being just a bit soulless, is that if
Speaker 3: everything goes right, they're going to keep building more schools. Yeah,
Speaker 3: and what are those schools need? They need more places
Speaker 3: to play, so kaching players are complaining. And over time
Speaker 3: baseball stadiums, we know, the major ones start converting back
Speaker 3: to natural surfaces. New varieties and strains of grass come out,
Speaker 3: and this enables you know, this enables more hardy plants matter.
Speaker 3: And if you go to the nineteen nineties, you'll see
Speaker 3: that the synthetic turf manufacturers introduce what they call a
Speaker 3: new generation of turf, a new and improved formula, and
Speaker 3: they say this will be safer, softer, more comfortable.
Speaker 2: And we'll tell you all about what those changes were
Speaker 2: and what they meant for everybody's health. Right after a
Speaker 2: word from our sponsors and we're back.
Speaker 4: So we sort of teased before the break that there
Speaker 4: was a change in this synthetic turf that supposedly would
Speaker 4: create a safer and more comfortable playing surface. This is
Speaker 4: in the nineties, so what kind of changes are we
Speaker 4: talking about. Obviously the goal here is to imitate grass
Speaker 4: as much as possible, you know, in terms of the
Speaker 4: feel and the length of the fibers or the material
Speaker 4: or whatever. But we know, as we mentioned earlier, that
Speaker 4: this was causing some kind of nasty injuries. You know,
Speaker 4: when folks were skidding around, they were basically getting like
Speaker 4: turf rash. So in order to mitigate that, I think,
Speaker 4: if I'm not mistaken, guys, the idea was to lengthen
Speaker 4: these grass fibers a bit. That could perhaps cause a
Speaker 4: little more cushioning, create a little bit more of a
Speaker 4: soft landing.
Speaker 2: Well, yeah, they'll bend a little more when your elbows
Speaker 2: and knees and everything land on them.
Speaker 3: Yeah. And they also one of the big improvements was
Speaker 3: what's called the infill. You can get a good picture
Speaker 3: of this if you go to the Synthetic Turf Council.
Speaker 3: But of course be aware that they have a horse
Speaker 3: in the race, right they have a team there rooting for.
Speaker 2: Them. We went on their website, looked at all the companies.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, yeh.
Speaker 3: Get ready for that one. What you need to know
Speaker 3: now is that the infill, the stuff that provides a
Speaker 3: lot of this cushioning when they came out with these improvements,
Speaker 3: it consisted of something called crumb rubber like cake crumb
Speaker 3: with a b rubber from used tires specifically that gets
Speaker 3: ground up into particles that are usually about just one
Speaker 3: millimeter across, and then they get mixed up with sand.
Speaker 3: And this was at the time a very cool solution
Speaker 3: to another problem. People had piles and piles and piles
Speaker 3: of tires and they didn't know what to do with them,
Speaker 3: you know what I mean. They they knew they wouldn't
Speaker 3: decompose very easily, and they were in open air dump
Speaker 3: They became condos for rats and vermin, mosquitoes, roaches, and
Speaker 3: if the weather conditions were right or wrong, then these
Speaker 3: piles of tires would catch on fire.
Speaker 2: I am just I love this episode, guys, because it
Speaker 2: really is human ingenuity and engineering at play, all intertwining.
Speaker 2: Just the idea of how important tires are to the
Speaker 2: growth of the United States of America, right, and Ben,
Speaker 2: I know you know a ton about that with car stuff,
Speaker 2: but like just how important building creating something that could
Speaker 2: get all of the cars around on these brand new
Speaker 2: interstates we had built at one time.
Speaker 3: For Henry Ford even built his own town right out
Speaker 3: in Brazil just to make tires and a bursty humility.
Speaker 3: He called it Fordlandia. Yeah.
Speaker 2: But then at some point those tires go back and
Speaker 2: there are you know, some companies who special in getting
Speaker 2: a tire back ready to go on the road, but
Speaker 2: mostly those tires end up in a landfill mm hmm.
Speaker 3: Yeah. And those dumps are also they're you know, they're
Speaker 3: not completely cut off from the environment obviously, so rain
Speaker 3: water falls on these tires and that helps chemicals from
Speaker 3: the tires leach into the ground. Everybody's saying these tires
Speaker 3: are a problems. So if you are an inventor and
Speaker 3: you come forward and you say, hey, I've got a
Speaker 3: great way to use these, you know, you can forget
Speaker 3: about the rat condos and those constant tire fires. Well,
Speaker 3: let's play baseball. Then it sounds like a win win, right.
Speaker 2: Yeah. The mosquitoes for me, it's really the mosquitos.
Speaker 3: Is the mosquitoes for you, and just taking like, think
Speaker 3: about how many tires they're using too. One one industry
Speaker 3: estimate we saw said that covering a NFL regulation football
Speaker 3: field with synthetic turf using is the equivalent of twenty
Speaker 3: thousand to forty thousand tires, which is a great way
Speaker 3: to clean your landfill.
Speaker 2: I mean, that's awesome, but I don't I never saw
Speaker 2: the statistics for the number of tires scrap tires that
Speaker 2: end up in landfills every year. I know it's a ton, right,
Speaker 2: it's a problem. Yeah, twenty to forty thousand, that's definitely
Speaker 2: making a dent. But is it just a dent?
Speaker 4: When you get new tires, you know, and oftentimes the
Speaker 4: auto shop or whatever, they'll for a fee dispose of
Speaker 4: your tires for you, sort of more of an out
Speaker 4: of sight, out of mind convenience. But it isn't really
Speaker 4: like they're just vanishing these tires in a puff of smoke.
Speaker 4: I mean, they're just going to one of these same places, right.
Speaker 2: They'll yeah, ship them to another country sometimes.
Speaker 3: Probably exactly, Yeah, and they'll they'll just it's a like
Speaker 3: a nimby fee you pay quite literally so that those
Speaker 3: tires are not in your backyard the tire manufacturer. Here's
Speaker 3: the tricky part. Tires are definitely not garden variety rubber
Speaker 3: like you would get from plant source. They contain a
Speaker 3: lot of chemicals that make them reliable on the road,
Speaker 3: stuff like oh, here we go, polysicilic aromatic hydrocarbons that
Speaker 3: makes it stronger, makes it more durable. But then they
Speaker 3: also treat it with zinc oxide. Zinc oxide can have lead,
Speaker 3: it can have cabmium, which is also bad. This stuff
Speaker 3: makes the tire more elastic, it makes it last longer,
Speaker 3: but the entire entire time it is emitting those chemicals
Speaker 3: or things generated by those substances. So in two thousand
Speaker 3: and nine, the EPA says, all right, all right, we've
Speaker 3: heard the people. We're gonna we're gonna check out synthetic
Speaker 3: turf in these sports fields and by this point in
Speaker 3: the two thousands it's on playgrounds too, and we're going
Speaker 3: to see if any of these particulates, any of these
Speaker 3: weird metals or chemicals or what are called volatile organic
Speaker 3: compounds aka new car smell stuff. We're going to see
Speaker 3: if that is dangerous to the people playing there. And surprise,
Speaker 3: the EPA said, nah, all good.
Speaker 2: Yeah, of course they did. Of course they did. Uh
Speaker 2: we kind of I don't want to. I don't want
Speaker 2: to glide over this fact too much. It is these
Speaker 2: turfs are being used in playgrounds, in playgrounds at schools,
Speaker 2: and playgrounds in public parks, all kinds of places. And
Speaker 2: you know, if there's potentially a problem, we got a
Speaker 2: serious problem. Because it's not only affecting professional you know,
Speaker 2: baseball players, football players, high school football players and baseball
Speaker 2: players and soccer players. It's affecting little kids who are
Speaker 2: just out there innocently playing on a playground.
Speaker 3: And you could argue all all the people involved or innocent, no.
Speaker 2: One else, No, no baseball player, no Major League baseball
Speaker 2: players innocent. I'm just sure no. But I guess what
Speaker 2: I mean from a public concern standpoint, right, that ups
Speaker 2: the ante when kids are now involved.
Speaker 3: Understood, Yeah, and agreed. And today only five professional baseball
Speaker 3: teams still use synthetic fields. But just because the things
Speaker 3: gone doesn't mean the effects or consequences of it have vanished.
Speaker 3: Just last month, as we record, a report came out
Speaker 3: via the Philadelphia Enquirer alleging that six former Philadelphia Phillies
Speaker 3: may have died from exposure to this stuff. Here's where
Speaker 3: it gets crazy. It appears to be true. Again, we
Speaker 3: were very careful in the beginning to say, like, we
Speaker 3: don't have all of the clue pieces, right. We know
Speaker 3: a place, we know a possible weapon, and we know
Speaker 3: a possible victim or perpetrator, but we don't have it
Speaker 3: all connected. Yet We're still like a card short.
Speaker 2: What did the we know a place where glioblastoma exists? Sorry,
Speaker 2: oh god, nailed it?
Speaker 3: Okay, Well, yeah, let's talk about that. What's what's the scoop?
Speaker 3: What did Philly tell us? So?
Speaker 4: The Philadelphia Inquirer reported that these six athletes, all of
Speaker 4: whom we talked about this in the Strange News segment,
Speaker 4: died from a very rare brain cancer called glioblastoma. Had
Speaker 4: played most of their careers with the Phillies, which the
Speaker 4: team that competed on artificial turf in Veteran stadium for decades.
Speaker 4: Former EPA scientist named Kyla Bennett, who is now with
Speaker 4: the Public Employees of Environmental Responsibility nonprofit, have this to
Speaker 4: say about the whole the whole situation. There is a
Speaker 4: high number of Philadelphia Phillies diagnosed with this rare cancer,
Speaker 4: and it looks weird, so that should be a red flag.
Speaker 4: We don't know what those chemicals are doing to us.
Speaker 4: What happened to exercising caution when we're talking about human health.
Speaker 4: This is a very good question, you know, I mean,
Speaker 4: and something that we've talked about many times where something like,
Speaker 4: for example, asbestos. You know, at one time it was
Speaker 4: promoted as being this magical future material that was you know,
Speaker 4: going to be everything should be built out of this stuff,
Speaker 4: and then of course they are off to the races
Speaker 4: installing it and everywhere from schools to hospitals, you know,
Speaker 4: you name it. Only too fine, through subsequent research and
Speaker 4: advances in technology and you know, analysis that this stuff
Speaker 4: is just deadly. I mean, it does seem like we
Speaker 4: are very you know, hot for the next new thing
Speaker 4: and the next new whatever that thing might be, sometimes
Speaker 4: to the point of you know, hedging our bets and saying, oh,
Speaker 4: it's fine, we done our due diligence. But then that
Speaker 4: due diligence changes and the scope of it changes over
Speaker 4: time as new methods become available for checking into this stuff.
Speaker 4: Not to mention when you start to see red flags
Speaker 4: like these cases we're seeing here.
Speaker 2: Well, and remember the connection between the artificial turf and
Speaker 2: those rare cancers at this point when we're you know,
Speaker 2: when we're when it's being looked into. Even then when
Speaker 2: the Philadelphia Inquirers read is talking about it and writing
Speaker 2: about it, it is just a connection, right. It's like, oh,
Speaker 2: here's one commonality between these six baseball players that got
Speaker 2: this rare cancer. But that's apparently not when the concern
Speaker 2: began when it comes to baseball players being affected potentially
Speaker 2: by that artificial turf.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Yeah. And for her part too, Kyla Bennett is a
Speaker 3: subject matter expert and is not doing some kind of
Speaker 3: polemical like hot take. Genuinely say it looks weird. It
Speaker 3: should be a red flag. Yeah. I think that's pretty understandable, right,
Speaker 3: And like you were saying, Matt, this is I don't
Speaker 3: know about guys. I was surprised to find that concerns
Speaker 3: date back so far. It goes beyond players saying like, hey,
Speaker 3: I don't care for this from my personal experience. In
Speaker 3: twenty seventeen, New York Times published an article about this
Speaker 3: very thing, and Matt, you want to hit them with
Speaker 3: the headline.
Speaker 2: Yeah, sure, The New York Times says the brain cancer
Speaker 2: that keeps killing baseball players.
Speaker 3: Oof, not pulling a lot of punches there. Yeah in
Speaker 3: the big Apple. Okay, well this.
Speaker 2: Really is rare. Well you know it's rare to be
Speaker 2: an MLB player. Well yeah, you know, this brain cancer
Speaker 2: is really rare. Though.
Speaker 3: I like that you're adding that layer too, because now
Speaker 3: we're seeing an increased selection, right, So we should note
Speaker 3: that in these studies and reports all the stuff we've found,
Speaker 3: multiple experts on brain cancer, like neurooncologists and so on,
Speaker 3: take a lot of pains to say there's not a
Speaker 3: one hundred percent confirmed causation. And they're they're doing that
Speaker 3: because they're doctors, they're experts. They don't want to say
Speaker 3: something is confirmed unless they're one hundred percent sure. So
Speaker 3: we can we can note that. But while we're noting
Speaker 3: that entirely to be fair, that's from the experts, we
Speaker 3: also have to note gleo blastoma is incredibly rare. It's
Speaker 3: it's it's not like it's not like diabetes or something
Speaker 3: or some other widespread condition.
Speaker 4: No, And it's something we've talked about in the past too,
Speaker 4: with these kinds of class action lawsuits, you know, even
Speaker 4: about you know, the Dark Waters scenario, you know, with
Speaker 4: the stuff that's on the nonstick pans. It is difficult
Speaker 4: to proof unequivocally that any of these kinds of substances
Speaker 4: are one hundred percent responsible for someone's cancer because there
Speaker 4: are so many other factors to take into consideration.
Speaker 3: You know, yes, but discloblastoma stuff, it has an incidents
Speaker 3: or a frequency rate of only three point two one
Speaker 3: per one hundred thousand people.
Speaker 4: Like, so, is does that help the case or hurt
Speaker 4: the case? I think it helps. It helps the case, yes, exactly,
Speaker 4: because you know, if it was a more general cancer
Speaker 4: that was more widely contracted, that would be more of
Speaker 4: a needle in the haystack kind of situation. Because this
Speaker 4: is such a narrowed focus, you know, in terms of
Speaker 4: like what the what the fallout might have been, you know,
Speaker 4: the consequences. Rather then it's a little easier to suggest causation.
Speaker 3: Right, yeah, yeah, just so, Like I mean, it'd be
Speaker 3: different if everybody was dying of some disease called like
Speaker 3: baseball at hand, you know what I mean, Like that
Speaker 3: would be kind of easy trace. But here you can
Speaker 3: see there's a lot of coincidence. Right. As a matter
Speaker 3: of fact, I think we're being quite diplomatic and deferring
Speaker 3: to the experts when we say this is not one
Speaker 3: hundred percent proven, but the stuff we're getting into next
Speaker 3: will probably affect the way you think about playgrounds in
Speaker 3: your neighborhood.
Speaker 2: Oh for sure. I just want to make the point
Speaker 2: I this is an estimate, but there are around twelve
Speaker 2: one hundred Major League Baseball players at any given time. Okay,
Speaker 2: twelve hundred. How many people live in the United States.
Speaker 3: Guys, more than year and thirty million. Yeah, hmmm, very
Speaker 3: small sample set, right, And that group of twelve hundred people,
Speaker 3: they do a lot of the same stuff. They do
Speaker 3: some things that normal people don't do because of their job, right,
Speaker 3: Like who's who's most likely to have a space related injury? Astronauts?
Speaker 3: You know what I mean. That's like who's most likely
Speaker 3: to encounter the dangerous effects of synthetic turf? The people
Speaker 3: who are around it the most often, you know. And
Speaker 3: so all of this turf, this is the part where
Speaker 3: we have to introduce another recurring villain on the show.
Speaker 3: All of this turf is made with pfas per and
Speaker 3: polyfloral aalkal substances, forever chemicals, forever chemicals.
Speaker 2: SHY twelve or fourteen.
Speaker 3: Diamond why by a diamond, get her something that'll last.
Speaker 3: Get her pfas exactly I'm getting. She already has it.
Speaker 2: It's already just like yours.
Speaker 3: Uh yeah. Some of these turfs are still made with
Speaker 3: recycled tires, which means they contain all all the nasty
Speaker 3: stuff that is bad for you but great for a
Speaker 3: long lasting tire. And as a result of growing number
Speaker 3: communities and even states in the US have banned these
Speaker 3: specific types of turf or said hey, we should think
Speaker 3: about banning these, and even the testing of multiple artificial fields,
Speaker 3: the newer ones, the older ones, across the board, they
Speaker 3: found that they're still a pretty high and dangerous presence
Speaker 3: of pfas compounds, no matter which one you look into
Speaker 3: and shout out to the Enquirer again over in Philly.
Speaker 2: And just one thing I want to point out here.
Speaker 2: We talked about how the EPA in two thousand and
Speaker 2: nine took a look at this artificial turf and said, hey, guys,
Speaker 2: all those concentrations of those things you're worried about, they're
Speaker 2: way below what we would call levels of concern, so
Speaker 2: we're good to go on the turf. There was a
Speaker 2: watchdog nonprofit called Public employees for environmental responsibility, And right
Speaker 2: after the EPA released those findings in two thousand and nine,
Speaker 2: they said, hey, guys, you haven't thought about the temperature.
Speaker 4: It's a good point. I mean, listen, look, we let's
Speaker 4: just say that. We don't want to besmirch the good
Speaker 4: name of the EPA, but it does seem like sometimes
Speaker 4: these these allowable levels, these tolerances that end up becoming
Speaker 4: codified by them, are just convenient enough for big business.
Speaker 4: Just putting that out there.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, like, hey, we can't keep all the rat
Speaker 3: poop out of cereal? What's a reasonable amount? That's still
Speaker 3: one of my favorite things. And this is, you know,
Speaker 3: again not to denigrate the EPA. The individuals working there
Speaker 3: are brilliant people who are doing their best. We're talking
Speaker 3: about a systemic problem with corruption in the EPA, that's right.
Speaker 4: Yeah, the ones that are the regulators that are actually
Speaker 4: you know, the researchers, the regulators, the folks that are
Speaker 4: working there day to day, not the folks that were
Speaker 4: thumbing our noses at a little bit. It's the higher ups.
Speaker 4: It's the folks that like create past the laws that
Speaker 4: ultimately kind of stemy the EPA from actually doing important work.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but guys, I'm so sorry to just keep going
Speaker 2: back at this, but the the artificial turf testing the
Speaker 2: EPA did was so underwhelming. Let's say, because we're talking
Speaker 2: about these forever chemicals that exist in these grasses right
Speaker 2: in these fibers, and then you've got the sun that's
Speaker 2: beating down on them all day if you're not inside
Speaker 2: an astrodome, and when that sun hits these artificial chemicals,
Speaker 2: gets surface temperatures of up to one hundred and fifty
Speaker 2: degrees fahrenheit, which means you've got plastics and these carbons
Speaker 2: that are just getting superheated.
Speaker 4: Being released right into the air. I would imagine, well, yeah.
Speaker 2: And then you've got players running around on them with cleats.
Speaker 4: Nothing's gonna diving, right, Yeah, So they're they're they're roughing
Speaker 4: them up with their cleats. They're already in a state
Speaker 4: of kind of heated, you know, let's just say they're
Speaker 4: being almost what's the word I'm looking for activated, right,
Speaker 4: and then they're getting roughed up with these cleats. People
Speaker 4: are diving into them face first. I'm sure this stuff
Speaker 4: has I mean, even just the layman like us would
Speaker 4: be like what's the deal with that? Why aren't they
Speaker 4: testing for these situations?
Speaker 3: Yeah, and add to that, the EPA recently revised its
Speaker 3: health advisory for at least one of these things, PFOS
Speaker 3: per fluorooctane sulfonic acid, and they said, huh okay, we
Speaker 3: looked back into it, and no level of exposure to
Speaker 3: this stuff is safe, at least in drinking water. Zero
Speaker 3: percent is good. And one of the reasons we keep
Speaker 3: shouting out the Inquirer over in Philly is because they
Speaker 3: obtained pieces of the Phillies artificial turf and they took
Speaker 3: it to not one, but two labs and found it
Speaker 3: contained sixteen types of pfas or pfas, including the stuff
Speaker 3: that the EPA said should absolutely not be around.
Speaker 4: Am I the only one that when we talk about
Speaker 4: PFA is I think of pf Chang's just putting that
Speaker 4: out there.
Speaker 3: I think, Okay, well, was it close to lunchtime, as
Speaker 3: let's take a you know what, let's take a snack break,
Speaker 3: snack with us. Folks will be right back and get
Speaker 3: into probably the most disturbing part of this tale. We've returned.
Speaker 3: So this is a bit like forensic work. Again. We
Speaker 3: can't prove exposure cause these cancers, but we can place
Speaker 3: the victims in direct, repeated contact with substances that are
Speaker 3: proven to cause these conditions. Pfas bad news. Corporations spend
Speaker 3: a lot of time and effort matrix dodging this issue
Speaker 3: in the past and in the present day. These forever chemicals,
Speaker 3: they don't break down. They're around, and they cannot wait
Speaker 3: to help you get cancer, birth defects, liver problems, kidney disease.
Speaker 3: They're waiting for you, and they get inside you pretty easily.
Speaker 3: It's not vampire rules. You don't have to invite them in.
Speaker 3: They can be inhaled, ingested. They can be absorbed through
Speaker 3: the skin, especially through a scrape or an open wound,
Speaker 3: say on a baseball field or a soccer field, or
Speaker 3: to playgrounds.
Speaker 2: Dude, did you see the NBC reporting from twenty fourteen
Speaker 2: about artificial turf and soccer players, specifically goalies who were constantly,
Speaker 2: you know, jumping right and landing on the ground as
Speaker 2: they're attempting to stop balls from getting in the goal.
Speaker 2: The oh my god, you guys. So many young female
Speaker 2: players ended up getting types of leukemia, types of cancers,
Speaker 2: and there were so many goalies. You got to check
Speaker 2: out the reporting out of NBC from twenty fourteen if
Speaker 2: you haven't read that yet, it's called how safe is
Speaker 2: the artificial turf your child plays on?
Speaker 3: Yeah, and again these headlines are speaking volumes. Right. The
Speaker 3: Phillies played on this turf between nineteen seventy one to
Speaker 3: two thousand and three. The six people who died died
Speaker 3: in their forties or their fifties. Additionally, globlastoma. The median
Speaker 3: age for that is sixty four, so they're dying at
Speaker 3: about three times the rate of the adult male general population.
Speaker 3: Medical experts will acknowledge the pieces are all there, but
Speaker 3: they stopped short of a full confirmation. They say, you know,
Speaker 3: and this is fair. They say. Other factors may have played.
Speaker 3: Lifestyle choices, right, temperature, concussions, things like that. But long
Speaker 3: story short, doesn't look good, doesn't stop in Philly is
Speaker 3: super popular for a long time. There needs to be
Speaker 3: a lot more research. Recommendations include things like hiring epidemiologists,
Speaker 3: let's get some statisticians in there, or maybe, hey, we
Speaker 3: should start a registry of players along with their causes
Speaker 3: of death. And the fact that there's not something like
Speaker 3: that already is pretty weird. It reminds me of the
Speaker 3: time we learned that the FBI just doesn't bother keeping
Speaker 3: a list of people who disappear in national parks.
Speaker 4: I have a question. We talked about this briefly, I
Speaker 4: think on the Strange News segment, But like, you know,
Speaker 4: when someone dies of lung cancer and they were a smoker,
Speaker 4: they can you know, the determination could be made that
Speaker 4: smoking may have been a contributing factor, but you can't
Speaker 4: exactly say, yes, smoking is definitely what killed this person.
Speaker 3: It would be tough. It would be tough because that person,
Speaker 3: unless they were in a controlled environment for the entirety
Speaker 3: of their life, they would inevitably run into other things
Speaker 3: that could be carcinogetic at some point, especially in the US,
Speaker 3: if they drove a.
Speaker 2: Car outside him.
Speaker 4: Well, and again, like we we have this research, but
Speaker 4: we don't know exactly how much exposure is too much?
Speaker 4: Is one time too much?
Speaker 3: You know?
Speaker 4: Is it ten times? Is it one season, one year
Speaker 4: of relatively regular exposure. They don't have those answers. Nobody does,
Speaker 4: to my understanding, at least, I just wanted to see
Speaker 4: if that's how y'all saw it as well.
Speaker 3: Well. I am curious there might be a group that
Speaker 3: low key does have the answers. We have to talk
Speaker 3: about the implications hashtag. No, Dennis Reynolds didn't always going
Speaker 3: to show up so much of the show, but hashtag
Speaker 3: not that kind of implication. So the turf was made
Speaker 3: from old tires solve a pre existing problem the tires
Speaker 3: from one place to another, doesn't solve the original problem
Speaker 3: with the tires. It just sort of kicks it into
Speaker 3: another neighborhood. And we found a group that we wanted
Speaker 3: to talk about a little bit today called the Synthetic
Speaker 3: Turf Council. They are the biggest trade group representing AstroTurf,
Speaker 3: synthetic turf in general. And there is a lobbyists, right yeah,
Speaker 3: or trade association, industry group, whatever phrase you want to
Speaker 3: hang it on.
Speaker 2: They're they're advocates.
Speaker 3: They're the turf Gang, the turf Boys.
Speaker 4: Yeah, turf Gang. I like that.
Speaker 3: So Turf Gang is in this intense rivalry between proponents
Speaker 3: of natural grass and these applications, and you you can
Speaker 3: go to their website right now, we got under the hood.
Speaker 3: I'm very curious. I want to be fully transparent here.
Speaker 3: I'm very curious what they're members only information is because
Speaker 3: they have a free public facing side of the site,
Speaker 3: and then for like a little less than one hundred bucks,
Speaker 3: they'll give you the you know, they'll give you the
Speaker 3: fresh fresh scoop.
Speaker 2: I'm going I'm molling, let's go. Yeah, I might hang
Speaker 2: out with Larry Ridgeway the VC over there. What's up?
Speaker 2: What's up, Larry, We're gonna hang on your members only area.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Do they have a Patreon anyway? So the STC Synthetic
Speaker 3: Turf Council has a lot of information on their public
Speaker 3: side of the site. You can see cool cross sections
Speaker 3: of how modern synthetic turf is made. You can read
Speaker 3: reports about their their teams answering basic questions. You can
Speaker 3: find a couple of statistics, but you won't find on
Speaker 3: the public side of the site much research about the
Speaker 3: possible health dangers of astro turf.
Speaker 2: No, it's not in their interest to talk about any
Speaker 2: of that stuff.
Speaker 4: In their purview, we're here to to flag wave and
Speaker 4: then we're the boosters for this stuff. Let's he no
Speaker 4: attention to all of that data.
Speaker 2: Well, but but look like really on the surface, the
Speaker 2: synthetic surface, guys like that person Larry that I mentioned,
Speaker 2: And Larry, I'm sorry for calling you out. You're just
Speaker 2: your face and name is on the front of the
Speaker 2: about page.
Speaker 3: I thought you were going to say your face and
Speaker 3: name offend me.
Speaker 2: No, not at all. I'm sure Larry's an awesome person.
Speaker 2: It's just Larry is the president and CEO of a
Speaker 2: couple of companies. One is called Precision Jet, one's called
Speaker 2: turf Bond. Precision Jet started back in two thousand and one,
Speaker 2: and what they do is they create the graphics that
Speaker 2: go on top of synthetic fields. Right, so if you've
Speaker 2: got a football team or whatever, they'll they'll get that
Speaker 2: going for you. Yeah, and they develop technology back in
Speaker 2: two thousand and one to do this kind of stuff
Speaker 2: and to make precision cutting. I believe they use I
Speaker 2: think it's water and like sand or something that he
Speaker 2: uses us. No, but he also works with turf Bond,
Speaker 2: which is the big artificial turf adhesive that exists out there.
Speaker 2: And why would you know a group that runs companies
Speaker 2: like that that are all based on the business of
Speaker 2: artificial turf Ever want anybody to hear about the potentially
Speaker 2: bad things that this stuff can cause.
Speaker 3: Yeah, another way to think about it. You go to
Speaker 3: like you go to like the Domino's Pizza website, You're
Speaker 3: not going to see a warning right on the front
Speaker 3: page of the website about how too much pizza is bad.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Man, you know they're not gonna pump your brakes once
Speaker 3: you got to the website and.
Speaker 2: Nobody out pizza is the hut? I mean, come on, well, true.
Speaker 3: Little Caesars has entered the chat. They're making crazy bread.
Speaker 3: Oh my god.
Speaker 4: All right, so no worried was always worth it?
Speaker 3: Always Okay, well maybe this will be worth it. We
Speaker 3: know we're going a little long today, but we wanted
Speaker 3: to bring this story to bear one to give it
Speaker 3: more attention. Again, not one hundred percent proven, but there's
Speaker 3: one last part that stuck with me, and I think
Speaker 3: it stuck with all of us, and probably stuck with
Speaker 3: some of us listening along at home with all the
Speaker 3: news about cancer coming from artificial turf that was made
Speaker 3: from reused and scrapped tires. What should we think about
Speaker 3: the tires currently in use, the tires on your car,
Speaker 3: the tires on your bike, the tires on the countless
Speaker 3: vehicles rolling all across your community today. Just like a
Speaker 3: baseball player sliding on turf. Those tires are sliding on asphalt, right.
Speaker 2: Yeah, didn't we do? Oh man, there's something pinging here, Ben.
Speaker 2: We talked about a new type of tire that was
Speaker 2: completely different. It was not based on rubber like that.
Speaker 2: It was I think it was stuff for genius. Maybe
Speaker 2: it was stuff of the future, but it was a
Speaker 2: tire that just I've got an image in my mind.
Speaker 3: It's like a po's like segmented.
Speaker 2: Yes, and it wasn't made of the same substances.
Speaker 3: There are a couple of different things like that. Segment
Speaker 3: and tires would be one. I guess we could all
Speaker 3: get tank tracks on our vehicles, right and just be
Speaker 3: prepared to go a little slower. But how do you
Speaker 3: change that whole industry? Well as something you would mentioned too, like.
Speaker 4: How well tires are made of what petroleum? You know?
Speaker 4: I mean, it's all part of the same supply chain,
Speaker 4: that legacy supply chain that it does not behoove you know,
Speaker 4: the old guard to support changing.
Speaker 3: It's not even an old guard question. What I'm getting
Speaker 3: as the entirety of like you're right about the petroleum,
Speaker 3: the enormity of change, the costs that would have to
Speaker 3: occur ripping up all the artificial turf all across the
Speaker 3: United States. Even if it's a thing that should be done,
Speaker 3: it's going to be difficult to do it. And it's
Speaker 3: not if this exposure stuff is true, it's not going
Speaker 3: to undo the consequences from the past decades. It's just
Speaker 3: gonna hopefully prevent further consequences. I don't know, and you know,
Speaker 3: it's not like turf is the only origin point of
Speaker 3: this stuff, but it makes you think. I'm here in
Speaker 3: tires outside of where I record right now, I'm gonna
Speaker 3: take a walk after this. I got to go get
Speaker 3: some lunch.
Speaker 4: I don't know, man, you go to PF Changs.
Speaker 3: I don't know. But now we don't have a PF change.
Speaker 3: It's convenient, guys, lucky you.
Speaker 4: We can go to the airport.
Speaker 3: We can go to the airport that the.
Speaker 4: PF changs at the airport serves breakfast. That's like a
Speaker 4: non PF Chang thing, you know what I mean.
Speaker 3: That's just for you, Heartsfeld, and we want to end
Speaker 3: this episode asking how far does this go? Folks would
Speaker 3: love to hear your take on the issue, the implications,
Speaker 3: and we'd love to hear other examples of seemingly innocuous
Speaker 3: things with a dangerous, potentially fatal dark side, Or have
Speaker 3: you found research that totally disproves these concerns about turf? Honestly,
Speaker 3: if that's the case, would love to read it. Make
Speaker 3: I think everybody feel a little bit better.
Speaker 4: Yeah, you can send it to us and through several
Speaker 4: means on the internet. You can find us at Conspiracy
Speaker 4: Stuff on Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube, Conspiracy Stuff show on
Speaker 4: Instagram and TikTok.
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