As a professional who treats athletes on a daily basis, I have noticed an alarming trend relating to artificial field turf replacing natural grass in parks and stadiums across the country. Specifically, I am referring to the increase in serious injuries (mostly lower body) as a direct result of replacing natural grass with field turf. Even more disturbing are the number of kids these days who experience serious injury (i.e. ACL tear) as a result of non-contact movement. While I will certainly defer to orthopedic surgeons to offer a more comprehensive overview of the potential dangers of field turf, I can’t help but notice that more and more athletes — including kids — are experiencing potential career-ending injuries likely as a result of playing surface.
Comparing natural grass and field turf
Before addressing the growing number of concerns related to injuries and field turf, a comparison between playing surfaces is provided below:
Natural grass advantages
- Softer surface, less impact on joints. Athletes often talk about how much softer it is to land on grass compared to the firm base surface under turf fields.
- Lower injury rates.
- Cooler playing surface, especially helpful in warmer climates. This is especially helpful in parts of the country that experience extreme heat.
Natural grass disadvantages
- Higher maintenance costs. Regular mowing, purchasing and replacing mowers, and purchasing fuel are a few examples of related costs.
- Field wear and tear — natural grass wears out. Many big schools simply can’t wait for the fields to recover with so many teams needing to practice and play games.
- More downtime between games waiting for fields to recover. Similar to the previous point, there are only so many things you can do to accelerate grass growth.
- Poor play-ability in bad weather. Rain, sleet, and snow can quickly make for very muddy conditions!
As you can see there are very valid reasons for considering the installation of field turf over grass, especially when you look at maintenance costs and the stress related to always waiting for fields to recover from weather, wear and tear. Is field turf the better option? Lets look at the pros and cons:
Field turf advantages
- Low maintenance. Throw the ball out and play! No cutting required, and the fields stayed lined!
- High durability. Field turf, while not immune from problems, generally provides a great surface for multiple games per day, over a long period of time.
- Long term cost savings. Once in, no more lawncare, manpower, or fuel needed to have practices and games.
Field turf disadvantages
- Higher risk for injury. New research is emerging all the time, and consistently shows field turf to be more closely related to lower-body injuries compared to natural grass.
- Hot playing surface (sometimes exceeding 130 degrees). Field turf can get so hot that it simply can’t be played on — very different than natural grass.
- Harder playing surface. Under the artificial turf and granulated rubber base is a hard surface that impacts hits to the ground.
- High installation costs. While there are savings to enjoy once turf is installed, there are big up front costs to changing grass to turf.
Similar to natural grass, there are both advantages and disadvantages with field turf, but what should jump out immediately is the higher risk for injury. Now that enough data has been collected looking at sport injuries that occur on field turf, we now have enough evidence to support the hypothesis that, all things being equal, athletes are at greater risk for injury on field turf compared to natural grass. These studies collectively suggest a notable increase in non-contact lower-body injuries, especially ACL and ankle/PCL issues, on artificial turf compared to grass—though findings vary based on sport, athlete level, turf generation, and study design. In fact, in many communities across the country today all of the school and local fields are field turf, and increasingly more kids are not only experiencing one major lower-body injury due to playing surface, but multiple injuries over time (meaning more kids today have had two ACL injuries).
Final thoughts
We now have enough evidence collected to suggest that field turf leaves athletes more vulnerable to injury compared to natural grass, especially with respect to lower-body injuries. While the injuries mount and the data collected reveals the dangers of field turf, there are very real, practical reasons why so many sport venues have shifted away from natural grass. These reasons mostly cluster around low maintenance, high durability, and long-term savings — but will those advantages be enough as more serious injuries occur?
drstankovich.com
