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This Article was published by USA Today regarding health issues on Synthetic Lawns installed through out the United States. Any one in the Bay Area, East Bay, North Bay, South Bay, or Peninsula should read this before deciding whether an artificial lawn is the right choice for them.

I highly recommend installing Native Sod Lawn over Artificial Lawn for a variety of reasons in Marin, Tiburon, Sausalito, Mill Valley, San Mateo, San Jose, Saratoga, Danville, San Ramon, Las Altos, Palo Alto, Walnut Creek, Blackhawk, Fremont, Belvedeere, Campbell, Millbrae, Sonoma, and Napa Valley . Native Sod requires 50-90% less water, and along with being extremely drought tolerant, requires little to no maintenance and puts oxygen back into the environment, not toxins and pollutants like Artificial Turf.

Artificial turf: Health hazard?
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By Michael McCarthy and Steve Berkowitz, USA TODAY
Since the 1960s, artificial turf has been installed on sports fields across the nation, touted as a more durable and cost-effective alternative to grass. Early synthetic surfaces — such as the short-bladed AstroTurf — have given way in recent years to longer-bladed versions designed to be softer and help prevent injuries.
But there are increasing concerns that some synthetic fields — particularly fraying AstroTurf surfaces that have been in place for years — are contaminated with lead and could pose a health hazard to children, athletes and others who use them.

A half-dozen artificial fields in New York and New Jersey as much as a decade old or more have been closed because of concern about high levels of lead in the turf fibers.

The threat of lead contamination in old turf has given a fresh platform to those raising red flags about newer types of artificial turf. These surfaces often include bits of recycled tires — known as “crumb rubber” — among the turf blades to provide a cushioned surface. They have been installed at thousands of schools, public parks and indoor sports facilities across the country, and more are scheduled.

The questions about both types of artificial turf have created ripples nationwide, prompting a federal investigation of artificial surfaces and raising anxiety among health and elected officials, some of whom want to ban new installations until government agencies study the potential health risks and environmental hazards.

“They’re in high schools, university stadiums, public parks. So it’s a public health issue,” says Rep. Rosa DeLauro, D-Conn., who helped prompt the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to get involved. “It is more than the lead issue. It’s the crumb rubber” in the new types of turf.

Says New Jersey Assemblyman John Rooney, “A little foresight is worth a hell of a lot of regret down the road.”

The artificial turf industry has been trying to reassure current and prospective customers its products are safe while pointing out the newer generation of turf helps find a use for millions of used tires.

So far, the concern about lead is focused mostly on older, nylon fields built by AstroTurf’s former U.S. owner, Southwest Recreational Industries, which went out of business in 2004. During a news conference Monday in New York, the current marketers of AstroTurf said their products and those marketed by Southwest Recreational Industries are safe.

“In the last couple of weeks, the science (showing turf is safe) is being trumped by the perception, the fears, the uncertainty and doubts,” said Jon Pritchett, chief executive officer of GeneralSports Venue (GSV), the exclusive licensee for AstroTurf in the USA.

The closed fields include four New Jersey surfaces — in Jersey City, Newark, Hoboken and at the College of New Jersey in Ewing — as well as a high school field in Cicero, N.Y., that were found to contain high levels of lead. Another closed high school field in Liverpool, N.Y. is being tested.

New Jersey health officials discovered the lead, used in pigment to color some fields, in the turf fibers. Kids and athletes could be exposed by inhaling or swallowing lead-laced turf fibers or “dust” kicked up by those playing on the fields, state epidemiologist Eddy Bresnitz says.

There have been no known cases of illness attributed to the fields, but at least four of the closed fields will be torn up and replaced with new artificial surfaces.

Elsewhere, towns have begun limiting access to artificial turf fields by young children, who are most at risk from exposure to lead, which can cause brain damage and even death.

In Montville, N.J., for example, kids under 7 will not be permitted to play on two artificial turf fields that registered unsafe lead levels, pending further testing, township administrator Frank Bastone says.

Children under 6 are “most at risk from exposure to lead,” says Dale Kemery of the EPA, which along with the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) has launched an investigation of artificial turf fields.

Old turf triggers questions

The original AstroTurf installed at the Astrodome in Houston in 1966 was a hard, carpet-like surface. It quickly spread throughout the NFL and Major League Baseball because it gave multi-use stadiums a consistent playing surface and was easier and cheaper to maintain than grass.

Today, those old rugs have largely fallen by the wayside in stadiums used by professional and college teams. The carpets have been replaced in such arenas by natural grass and newer, more sophisticated types of artificial turf.

However, at some smaller stadiums used by high schools, on playgrounds and other places, old AstroTurf remains.

The newer fields usually are made from polyethylene and polypropylene, plastics commonly used to make everything from grocery bags to food containers, as well as nylon or a mix of materials. The fields mimic the look, feel and footing of natural turf, and they often feature longer strands of plastic “grass” and crumb rubber from recycled car and truck tires. These tiny bits of infill provide a springy cushion for kids and weekend warriors and can be kicked up just like dirt on a natural grass field.

The national investigation by the CPSC and the EPA will focus on all kinds of turf, not just nylon, CPSC spokeswoman Julie Vallese says. The agency already is collecting turf samples and expects to issue a report by early summer. “Our focus is on the risk to exposure from lead,” Vallese says.

Meanwhile, the concern over fake turf has triggered efforts by legislators in five states to get studies of potential health and environmental hazards done. Several schools and municipalities nationwide also are testing their fields.

There are 3,500 full-size, artificial fields in the USA, estimates Rick Doyle, president of the Synthetic Turf Council, a trade group. Such turf accounts for 900 to 1,000 installations a year but does not include smaller surfaces such as practice fields and playgrounds.

DeLauro and other officials worry about kids and athletes inhaling or swallowing the small rubber pellets. Environmentalists also have cited the pellets as a concern, questioning whether compounds from recycled tire rubber can run off the turf and pollute rivers, lakes, streams and groundwater.

Some colleges, including Ohio State and Western Carolina, are having their synthetic fields tested.

Separate bills in the New York, New Jersey and California legislatures would ban the installation of new fields until the completion of comprehensive health and environmental studies.

Connecticut Senate Minority Leader John McKinney said Wednesday that he is working with the commissioners of the state’s departments of public health and environmental protection to find a way to use existing funds for a study. In New York City, Public Advocate Betsy Gotbaum has called for an “immediate moratorium” on turf installations until the city completes a study on their “adverse” health effects.

Responding to a request from California State Sen. Abel Maldonado, Attorney General Jerry Brown’s office says it will study whether signs should be posted near synthetic fields warning that users could be exposed to toxic chemicals. The California Integrated Waste Management Board has told Maldonado it plans to evaluate whether crumb rubber fields release dangerous chemicals — or cause abrasions and bacterial infections more serious than those occurring on a natural surface. A bill by Minnesota State Rep. Phyllis Kahn also calls for a health study on the impacts of crumb rubber use.

Risks overblown, industry says

The artificial turf industry says the controversy is based mostly on scientifically flawed attacks and sensationalized claims of the risks associated with turf. At least one coach agrees that the issue has been blown out of proportion.

“Nobody talks about all the radon in the soil, and there are kids playing on that every day, breathing it in,” says Mark Zimmerman, an assistant football coach at McQueen High School in Reno.

One artificial turf maker is changing its manufacturing process to remove potential toxins.

Stephen P. Noe, president and CEO of Sportexe Construction Services, which has installed more than 200 full-size fields in the last three years, recently posted a note on the company’s website saying “a few colors” of its products “were produced using low levels of lead chromate-based pigments. … Going forward Sportexe will not be offering these heavy metal based color choices. We intend to substitute alternative colors based on non-heavy metal based pigments. … Although we do not see a health risk in the current products, we believe that this is the best decision for all of our constituents.”

GeneralSports Venue owner Michael Dennis says he has a contract to rip up the closed field in Newark and replace it with a new “PureGrass” system with lead-free nylon fibers. The company also will install a lead-free artificial baseball field in the city.

Shira Miller, a spokeswoman for the Synthetic Turf Council, said via e-mail Wednesday that manufacturers have been coming together to share information about standards and, “The STC welcomes the involvement of the Consumer Product Safety Commission, the EPA and other groups since we are confident their scrutiny will answer the question of safety issues once and for all.”

FieldTurf Tarkett dominates the artificial turf industry with 1,900 U.S. fields. Ten NFL teams play their home games on the company’s products. The Montreal-based company has won the contract to replace the closed field at Hoboken’s Frank Sinatra Park. The polyethylene FieldTurf surfaces checked by New Jersey health officials contained trace amounts of lead and were deemed not harmful.

FieldTurf executives are frustrated that their polyethylene products keep getting lumped in with nylon fields built by a company that’s no longer in business.

“Our fields were tested and found to be about 50 times below what the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission allows in Mr. Potato Head or in Lego,” CEO Joe Fields said in a statement.

That’s good news, New York state Sen. Jim Alesi says. But he wants more proof before accepting the opinion of manufacturers or industry-paid scientists. “We need to have someone that’s not selling us the product tell us that it’s safe,” he says. “If what they’re saying is believable, then there’s nothing wrong with the old Ronald Reagan approach: trust but verify.”

The New York Department of Environmental Conservation has launched a study to “assess the potential environmental impact from crumb rubber as an infill material,” spokeswoman Lori O’Connell says.

The upfront costs to install a synthetic field run from $400,000 to several million dollars. But the fields can last 10 years or more and withstand the kind of non-stop pounding that would turn a natural grass field into dirt.

The operator of at least one of the fields closed recently says he has “no choice” but to replace it with another synthetic surface. Densely populated urban areas have to use artificial fields, says Bob Hurley, director of parks and recreation for Jersey City, which has shut down its 11-year-old AstroTurf field in Cochrane Stadium at Caven Point after finding lead during testing.

The fake grass allows local teams to “play twice as many” football, baseball and soccer games, says Hurley, a well-known high school boys basketball coach at St. Anthony. “If it rains, half an hour later everything has soaked through and we’re able to play.”

Jeff Tittel, director of the Sierra Club of New Jersey, says public officials and educators should be in the business of protecting children, he says, not squeezing in as many games as possible.

Says New York City’s Gotbaum: “If there’s no potential long-term or short-term effects that aren’t too serious, we’ll be the first to get out there and say, ‘Hey, it’s OK. Everybody get out and play.’ I’ll be the first person to do that. But I’m not there yet.”

Contributing: Tom Ankner; Tehani Schneider and Abbott Koloff of the (Morristown, N.J.) Daily Record; Chris Joyner of The (Jackson, Miss.) Clarion-Ledger; Matthew Daneman of the Rochester (N.Y.) Democrat and Chronicle; Jordan Schrader of the Asheville (N.C.) Citizen-Times; Jeff Martin of the (Sioux Falls, S.D.) Argus Leader; Jeff Delong of the Reno Gazette-Journal

Here is an article written in the Contra Costa Times on a fence we installed for the Contra Costa Community Garden.  Our landscape construction, landscape development division did a fantastic job.  CKMS Designed and installed the gopher/squirrel fence and has kept them out.  This can be done for any resident in the Bay Area, East Bay, North Bay, South Bay, or the Peninsula but especially for clients with gopher/squirrel problems like in Palo Alto, Saratoga, Danville, Alamo, San Ramon, Dublin, Pleasonton, Lafayette, Moraga, Orinda, Walnut Creek, Los Altos, Tiburon, Marin, Sausalito, Mill Valley, or Belvedeere.

Our Garden: Our new fence
By Joan Morris
Contra Costa Times
Posted: 09/09/2009 10:00:00 AM PDT
Updated: 09/09/2009 10:39:34 AM PDT

Our Garden now has Our Fence. And it’s working pretty well on “our squirrels.”

The fence, built of lumber and welded wire, is sort of a Taj Mahal of fences. I was expecting some steel posts and wire, but the folks at CK Management Systems and CK Landscape really went the extra mile, cementing thick posts into the ground, running the fencing around all four plots and finishing it off with two whisper-quiet gates.

Matt Cartwright, who was in charge of the project, even recycled our old not-so-great and certainly not-so-beautiful fencing. Work crews buried it 2 feet down to stop the ground squirrels from burrowing underneath.

At the same time, Matt’s brother, Alex, found an additive for our “fertigation” system that is supposed to keep the squirrels at bay. As you may remember, the Cartwrights donated our irrigation system earlier in the season. The fertigation consists of a small tank that mixes nutrients — and anti-squirrel stuff — into the water each time the sprinklers come on.

I checked out the fence the day after it went up and found signs our furry little friends already had been testing it. There were little holes started all around the perimeter. But the buried fencing thwarted them.

With a little help from a couple of volunteers, I’ve removed the remaining old fencing and the netting, meaning we now have free and easy access to the garden. To celebrate, we harvested 16 pounds of tomatoes for the Food Bank.

We have had an incursion into the garden, but the damage has been very light. In fact, I’m starting to suspect that instead of a squirrel getting in, we’ve got one inside that is trying to get out. I’ve found a couple of gnawed tomatoes and some test holes dug from inside the compound. And earlier in the week, I found a squirrel inside.

It ran around the edge of the fence, looking for an opening, and then it just disappeared amid the tomatoes. Because it never attempted to climb the fence, I think it disappeared down a hidey hole. The next step will be to set a humane trap, capture the little guy and then return him to his friends on the outside. And he better not break his parole.

Thanks so much to Matt, Alex and their father, Gary Cartwright, for their beyond generous contribution to Our Garden.

What you missed

We skipped the class because of the Labor Day weekend.

Our Garden online

Follow the progress of the garden and check out our how-to videos. Go to Contra CostaTimes.com/ourgarden or InsideBayArea.com/ourgarden. Follow Our Garden’s progress at twitter.com/gardeneditor.

Sponsors

The Bay Area News Group-East Bay thanks Our Garden’s sponsors:

Ace, Walnut Creek Hardware, 2044 Mt Diablo Blvd., Walnut Creek, 925-705-7500

Central Contra Costa Solid Waste Authority, 1111 Civic Drive, Suite 275, Walnut Creek, 925-906-1801, www.wastediversion.org.

CK Management Systems, 315 Diablo Road, Suite 220, Danville, 925-943-7323, www.cklandscape.com.

Contra Costa County Cooperative Extension and Master Gardeners

Hamilton Tree Service, 127 Aspen Drive No. 211, Pacheco, 925-228-1010

Marsha McCollum Leutza, representing Botanical Interests, 337 Cleveland Ave., Petaluma, 94958

Merlot Nursery, 701 Northgate Road, Walnut Creek, 925-943-1958

Monster Worms, Dave Anderson, P.O. Box 1211, Antioch, CA 94509, 925-890-5773, MonsterWorms.com.

Mt. Diablo Nursery, 3295 Mt. Diablo Blvd., Lafayette, 925-283-3830

Orchard Nursery, 4010 Mt. Diablo Blvd., Lafayette, 925-284-4474

Smart Clock Installation, Fertigation System, MP Rotators, water efficient irrigation systems we installed for Contra Costa Community Vegetable Garden in East Bay, Walnut Creek

Our Garden: Our irrigation system
By Joan Morris
Contra Costa Times
Posted: 06/25/2009 02:00:00 PM PDT
Updated: 06/26/2009 12:47:35 PM PDT

What’s new

The talk about Our Garden has been about the new irrigation system donated and installed by CK Management Systems of Danville. It’s estimated to save us 50 percent of water use, and each time it comes on it’s “fertigating” the garden.

Here’s how it works. Incorporated in the system is a small tank that contains a two-month supply of organic fertilizer, bio-stimulants, nutrients and a little something that supposed to keep the squirrels at bay (more on that later).

The fertigation mixture is dispersed in tiny amount each time the water comes on, and because it’s being mixed with the water and put directly on the plants, it has 100 percent absorption.

Three of our four plots are now hooked up to the system. We ran into some problems with a water leak before the fourth one went in, but the work will be completed soon. Each bed has a different type of system. Bed No. 2 has variable flow microsprays, Bed No. 3 has multi-stream adjustable bubblers, and Bed No. 4 MP (match precipitation) rotators.

In addition to the systems, we also now own a weather station, which sounds much more impressive than it looks. It’s a white contraption not much bigger than a soda can, but it collects details on temperature, humidity, light, wind and a dozen other tidbits and relays them every five minutes to a “smart” clock.

The clock is programmed with information about the garden, from its longitude and latitude to
the type of garden we have. Using the programming and the information supplied by the miniature weather station, it decides when and how much to water.

Alex Cartwright, president of CK Management, and his team installed the system so expertly that when I showed up at Our Garden on Monday, I thought they hadn’t been able to do the work on Saturday. Our fences and bird netting were still in place, and the mulched pathways between rows looked exactly as I’d left them. It was only as I was walking around the garden checking on the plants that I noticed the emitters.

The company deals not only in irrigation systems but also gray water, rain water catchment and subterranean drip systems. Their generous contribution to Our Garden will go a long way to ensure our success not only this season, but for many more to come.

It also means that Master Gardener Russell Jones, who had been volunteering to hand-water the garden every day since we started, now has a bit more time to devote to his own garden. We send much thanks with him.

In other big news of the day, we had our first harvest last week. Volunteers gathered 10 zucchini and a handful of beans, which were sent off to the Food Bank of Contra Costa and Solano along with a promise that more is on the way.

Squirrel update. I knew it was tempting to fate to say we had the squirrels under control. The minute they read that, they donned gas masks and bunny suits, fought their way through the fumes and ate, down to the ground, a small stand of chard that a volunteer had donated from her garden.

After that, they started on the newly planted cucumbers and beans, as well as most of the marigolds.

We suspected that all of the work done putting in the irrigation system disturbed the aroma barricade we’d erected, so we’ve reapplied it and hoped that it, along with the fertigation treatments, will keep the wee beasties away. But no. We’re moving on to another plan, whenever we think of one. I long ago accepted the fact that we are at war, and there is no end in sight.

What you missed

Last week’s class was compost tea. Bethallyn Black, with UC Cooperative Extension’s Contra Costa County Master Gardener program, brought in compost she’d bought dirt cheap from the Walnut Creek Recycling Center (check with your local waste management company to see if they also sell compost). Using a recipe of one part compost to 10 parts water, Black stirred up a tea that was then served to our Three Sisters plants.

Ideally, compost tea is “brewed” using an aerator, but Black says that stirring the solution for an hour can achieve passable results. The important thing is keep the compost suspended in solution, and to create an aerobic brew by agitating the water.

Also, Master Gardener Kathleen Rosania and her husband demonstrated a fast, easy and very cool way to build a trellis for our beans. Using three lengths of aluminum half-inch electrical conduit pipe, two elbow connectors, two pieces of rebar and a nylon trellis netting.

The pipes are sold in 10 foot lengths, so cut them in half. Use the elbow joints to connect a top bar to two sides, tie the netting in place and set the frame over the lengths of rebar, which have already been pressed into the ground.

You end up with a very sturdy, functional trellis that you can take down after the season, take apart and store until the next year. We now have two in Our Garden.

How our garden grows

Everything is looking good as the newer plants start to settle in and grow, and the older ones start blooming and producing. We’re anxious to see what the fertigation will mean for growth and production.

Our Garden online

Follow the progress of the garden and check out our how-to videos. Go to Contra CostaTimes.com/our garden or InsideBayArea.com/ ourgarden. Follow Our Garden’s progress on Twitter at twitter.com/gardeneditor.