A few minutes before noon on the hottest day of the year (so far), East River Park is nearly empty. A lone woman sits a blanket down under the minimal shade of a young tree. Nearby, a mother sits in the sun admiring her two children playing in a sprinkler, and the basketball court at least has two occupants.
Some of the green space in the park is real grass. The deep-green blades haven’t been cut in a while but are soft to the touch and the heat they hold is well within the range of what’s comfortable.
The athletic fields — with artificial grass surfaces — are both deserted, perhaps unsurprisingly as school is in session for another couple of days; in a few hours, perhaps, the baseball and soccer fields could be crawling with children. They’d be exposing themselves to potentially harmful conditions, however. Because the plastic turf gets hot, much hotter than natural grass.
A 2020 study of a turf field in San Francisco showed that on a 108-degree day, registered surface temperatures of 138 degrees and a New York State Department of Environmental Conservation report from 2009 also showed that the synthetic fields tested were between 35 and 42 degrees hotter on average than their natural grass counterparts.
During a heat advisory in 2022, the nonprofit East River Park Action took readings of surface temperatures around East River Park. No spot was hotter than the turf field inside the John V. Lindsay East River Park Track, which reached 157 degrees on a 97-degree day.
This morning, the air above the turf of the ball field is already shimmering from the heat, and the mercury is still expected to rise a few degrees before it peaks. Touching the synthetic grass, no infrared thermometer is needed: it’s uncomfortable, almost painful, and much hotter than even the concrete path that snakes through the park.
Contributing to the scorching surface temperatures is the infill in artificial turf, which absorbs heat from the sun. But the grass blades also capture solar radiation, said Dr. Rachel Massey, researcher at the Lowell Center for Sustainable Production at the University of Massachusetts.
If Council Member Christopher Marte could decide, the athletic fields in East River Park — which falls within his district — would be made of dirt and natural grass. He’s concerned with the risks to human health and the environment, and earlier this year introduced a bill to the City Council to ban future use of artificial grass in New York City parks.
“The reason I introduced this bill is East River Park. I grew up playing baseball, soccer and tag there, and seeing not just all the grass be removed but the trees be chopped down, was a call to action to say that this should never happen again,” Marte said.
Some cities, including Boston, already have bans for plastic grass in place, and New York could soon follow.
“New York City is a leader, and if we could get artificial turf ban here and put real grass in that, that would help stop this very disruptive industry from expanding,” said Pat Arnow, founder of East River Park Action.
Marte and others, including advocacy groups like East River Park Action and Beyond Plastics, have argued that artificial grass is detrimental to both those who use it, and the environment. In particular, it’s the chemicals and the plastics that are causes for concern, say supporters of an artificial turf ban.
To provide cushioning and support, to keep the plastic grass blades upright and to make the turf feel more natural, infill is often spread between the fibers. The infill can be made of different things, including crumb rubber (made from shredded tires), synthetic rubber, acrylic-coated sand, and cork or other natural materials; combining infills is not uncommon.
Of the alternatives, crumb rubber remains the most commonly used infill, according to turf supplier Motz Group. In a literature review, the Environmental Protection Agency noted that over 350 chemicals have been identified in tire crumb, including metals like lead and arsenic, various carcinogenic polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) and a wide range of volatile organic compounds (VOCs).
In 2020, a team of researchers which included Dr. Massey, analyzed a number of different infills, and found them all to pose some degree of concern.
The Department of Parks and Recreation outlines in its specifications for synthetic turf that rubber crumbs is not to be used for infill in New York City, but it remains the infill in 78 turf fields across the city. Instead, the city now advises that acrylic-coated sand be used. The risks associated with this kind of infill are uncertain, as parts of these products remain proprietary information.
The plastics that make up the synthetic grass blades can also pose a threat, as they and infill particles migrate easily into waterways, soil, clothing, hair and mouths. They can break down into microplastics, which have been linked to a number of health issues.
In the environment, artificial grass contributes significantly to plastic pollution; a 2023 study on plastics in the waters outside Barcelona, found that artificial turf fibers accounted for up to 15 percent of the present meso- and microplastics.
Communities have for years highlighted the presence of plastic grass and infill in places far away from turf fields, noted Dr. Massey, but to have it documented in a research study provides “a more comprehensive understanding” of the problem.
PFAS, known as “forever chemicals” has also been found in artificial turf. PFAS chemicals have been linked to cancer, birth defects and a host of other serious health problems. (A law will go into effect on the last day of 2026 that bans the use of PFAS in artificial turf carpet sold in New York State.)
The deaths of six former MLB players for the Philadelphia Phillies — which for many years played on turf — reignited the debate around the use of artificial grass in the world of professional sports.
“A lot of our retired baseball players are getting cancer-related illnesses because of the turf that they played on every single day. I think that should set off an alarm for us to really think about our kids that are playing on these turf fields every recess, sometimes three or four times a day,” Marte said.
All six players died from a rare brain cancer, which some have linked to exposure to PFAS from the turf. This claim is contested, however, and brain experts have cautioned that it’s impossible to prove that all cases were caused by forever chemicals from the plastic grass.
While many of the chemicals present in artificial turf have documented health effects on humans, when it comes to something like exposure from chemicals that have many different sources, it is difficult to attribute a health effect to a specific exposure, said Dr. Massey. There is a gap in the research field, she added, and there are no strong epidemiological studies that have examined whether people have an increased risk of cancer as a result of playing on artificial turf fields.
At the same time, Dr. Massey said, “We don’t need the results of an epidemiological study in order to take common sense steps to protect human health and the environment.” Mount Sinai has several recommendations for how to limit exposure to potentially harmful chemicals from artificial turf, including showering immediately after use, avoiding bringing infill and synthetic fibers home, and washing hands before eating or drinking.
According to Dr. Massey, another such measure is simply installing natural grass fields.
“In many communities, it is possible to make that investment in a well-designed, well-maintained natural grass field, and if you do that, then you don’t have to deal with all these complicated questions around the potential impacts of these rubber and plastic products,” she said.
But the cost of a natural grass field has been the city’s Parks Department’s primary argument for continued installation of artificial turf. Council Member Marte disagrees, telling the Village Star-Revue that long-term, natural grass is more cost effective.
The research does not convincingly favor either side. Turf, by all accounts, is more expensive to install than natural grass, and it must be replaced every eight to 10 years. Maintenance costs are more difficult to pin down and also vary greatly. Natural grass advocates argue that it’s “a myth” that turf is cheaper to maintain, but a cost analysis conducted by Woodland Public Schools in the state of Washington indicated that maintaining an artificial turf field was significantly cheaper than natural grass.
One study of the life-cycle costs of turf fields and its natural grass counterparts, concluded that the installation cost of turf made such fields more expensive than grass fields, even though the maintenance of turf was less expensive. However, as turf is more durable, the cost per player use hour is lower than on natural grass. Thus, the researchers write, “The combined expenses of synthetic fields may have been greater than those of natural grass, but with enough player use they can be more cost effective than natural grass.
The larger issue, at least in the case of New York City, is that the Parks Department for decades has suffered from insufficient funding. In 2024, the department’s budget was nearly $583 million, which accounted for only 0.54 percent of the city’s entire budget. (Compare that to cities like Los Angeles and Chicago, which — although they have less public green space — spend 2.9 and 4.3 percent, respectively, of the city budget on parks.) Advocates and elected officials have for a long time called for at least one percent of the city’s budget to go to the city’s parks. Count Marte among that group.
“I put it as one of my priorities every single year when we do the budget, but this administration has tailed right, and I think because of that lack of funding, it puts our community in unsafe positions,” he said.
Specifically, there are too many parks in need of maintenance, and not enough money in the maintenance budget. While capital dollars often exist for installation of a turf field — like in the newly reopened East River Park — the lower maintenance cost compared to natural grass is appealing for a department struggling mightily as it is to care for its sprawling 30,000 acres of parkland.
“Hand in hand with this artificial turf ban, we have to have a better maintenance budget to care for real grass fields,” Arnow said.
A 30-minute walk from East River Park is the Elizabeth Street Garden, another contentious spot in the battle between natural and urban jungle. After a conflict with Mayor Eric Adams, who wanted to build housing on the site, Marte and an informal coalition of local advocates and celebrities like Patti Smith and Robert De Niro managed to save the garden from becoming a housing development.
And while the athletic fields in East River Park are too late to make into grass, a turf ban would open the possibility of replacing the plastic with real grass once it’s run through its life cycle, Marte suggested.
“I think we have to seriously fight to preserve our green spaces, especially now when they’re under threat. When you look at our community gardens across the city being on the chopping list for development, I think it’s more pressing now that we move forward with legislation to make more actual green, safe spaces.”
