Recycled tires have become the top choice material for surfacing children’s playgrounds. The majority of high school footballs fields use plastic grass and rubber pellets called “tire crumb” to absorb impact. Recycling seems like a good thing, right? Repurposing old tires? It’s an environmental success story, says the Rubber Manufacturers Association. 

Except plastics and tires are known to contain toxins and cause endocrine disruption. 

Listen to one high school soccer goalie, “The little black beads,” she said. “In the games and practices they’d get in my eyes, they’d get in my mouth, they’d get in my nose. My mom would get so mad at me because I’d go to the bathroom to take a shower, and [they] would be everywhere. We all know how bad tires are,” she said “You don’t eat tires. Yet we were.” Three years later, she had stage 3 Hodgkins lymphoma. Then dozens of other soccer goalies came forward with lymphomas and leukemias.