Any level of lead should be considered dangerous to children, said New Jersey's then deputy health commissioner, Dr. Eddy Bresnitz, especially considering that many kids may have been exposed to lead in other ways. "It could add to the levels already in their bodies," he said, noting that lead had been entirely removed from products like household paint. "We probably shouldn't expose children to any lead."
The New Jersey fields were made of the old-fashioned, carpet-style turf, not the rubber-infill turf that New York was using. At the July 2008 opening of a shredded-tire field in Jamaica, Queens, Benepe belittled the concerns and even took credit for ordering the literature review funded by the New York Community Trust. "There are no health risks," he said. But unbeknownst to the public, New York City had quietly started to test fields for lead. In the absence of federal guidelines, these tests used an EPA standard for acceptable lead levels in playground soil. The decade-old standard held that lead concentrations greater than 400 parts per million were dangerous.
On Nov. 24, 2008, a test was conducted at Thomas Jefferson Park in East Harlem, and the recycled-tire field flunked. The city decided to destroy the turf, which had been installed only five years before at a cost of $1.4 million.
Yet this decision was not announced for nearly a month. It came to light at the end of a business day three days before Christmas. Gotbaum felt blindsided. "I had no idea about the testing," she said. "It had all been done under the radar. It was very sneaky." Suddenly, Gotbaum said, the literature review looked like a delay tactic to avoid testing. "They were stalling." She understood the fears of having to replace fields, "but you can't have the high lead levels found in Thomas Jefferson Park," she said.
The Parks Department announced the field had a lead reading of 500 parts per million, just above the EPA standard, but the data sheets showed 16 of 31 samples had much higher readings. One spot had a lead measurement of 1,956 parts per million—nearly four times the field's single released reading. Nancy Clark explained the final result had been a "composite" of the 31 samples. She claimed composite testing—mixing all the samples together and then taking one measurement—was "the normal procedure" and "the best way to characterize an overall field."
"That's incorrect," countered David Brown, a public health toxicologist, after reviewing the data sheets. Brown is the former head of environmental epidemiology at the Connecticut Department of Public Health, and he's also worked at the CDC. "Look at the variability—these readings are all over the place, and half exceed the regulatory limit. You can't average this out."
"Composites may mask hot spots," warns an EPA document on assessing environmental risks. That's why Brown believes composite measurements aren't appropriate for health questions: "If a child falls down in the hot spot, the child's had the exposure."
The recycled-tire material complicates the hot-spot problem. All tires are not the same: They're manufactured for different purposes—and in different countries—and can consequently contain different chemicals or chemicals in different amounts. But when the city resumed testing 101 other fields in January 2009, far fewer samples were taken than at Thomas Jefferson Park. While the previous test measured 31 areas, the new tests combined only five samples from each field for one composite measurement. The change in methodology has never been revealed to the public.
