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Old 27th January 2017, 06:47 AM   #1
William Parcher
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Cancer and soccer and artificial turf

Here is an interesting interaction of everyday common sense evaluation and genuine scientific analysis. What would appear to be a clear case of cause and effect is found to be not so under closer scrutiny.


Soccer players' cancers ignite debate over turf safety


Originally Posted by CNN
Jean Bryant, a Seattle mother of three boys, remembers the moment when her friend Amy Griffin first mentioned those "little black dots."

It was about seven years ago, and their children were in preschool together. Griffin, assistant head coach of women's soccer at the University of Washington, mentioned to Bryant how "it was weird" that some of her current and former players, especially goalkeepers, had been diagnosed with cancer.

Griffin turned to Bryant and said she wondered whether cancer was somehow associated with those "little black dots" on the artificial turf fields where they play, which were then replacing natural grass fields. Those dots are recycled tire crumbs. "I didn't think much of it until my son," Bryant said. Years after that conversation, just before he turned 14, Jack Bryant was diagnosed with cancer. He's a soccer goalie...

...However, the study results from the Washington State Department of Health investigation did not suggest that soccer players are at an increased risk for cancer due to the tire crumbs.

The results showed that the cancer rate among soccer players in the investigation, based on Griffin's list, was actually less than expected compared with the cancer rate among all Washington residents of similar ages.

For the players' cancer cases to be a cluster, there would have to be a greater-than-expected number of cases of the same type of cancer, according to criteria listed by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention...
http://www.cnn.com/2017/01/27/health...ile/index.html
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Old 27th January 2017, 07:06 AM   #2
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Originally Posted by William Parcher View Post
Here is an interesting interaction of everyday common sense evaluation and genuine scientific analysis. What would appear to be a clear case of cause and effect is found to be not so under closer scrutiny.


Soccer players' cancers ignite debate over turf safety




http://www.cnn.com/2017/01/27/health...ile/index.html
Maybe soccer causes cancer.
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Old 27th January 2017, 07:42 AM   #3
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It's probably from the plating on all those Participation Trophys.

Tire crumbs? Seriously? You do realize that zall that tead that wears off of all those billions of tires everyd ay goes into the air we breath.

So, what kind of cancers?
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Old 27th January 2017, 07:47 AM   #4
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Originally Posted by casebro View Post
Tire crumbs? Seriously? You do realize that zall that tead that wears off of all those billions of tires everyd ay goes into the air we breath.
This is discussed in the article.

Quote:
So, what kind of cancers?
This is discussed in the article.
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Old 27th January 2017, 09:21 AM   #5
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http://www.doh.wa.gov/CommunityandEn.../SyntheticTurf
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Old 27th January 2017, 09:51 AM   #6
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Originally Posted by Spindrift View Post
Maybe soccer causes cancer.
We can only hope.
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Old 30th January 2017, 11:32 AM   #7
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Wasn't this reported on quite a while back?

As to the difference between tire wear getting things into the atmosphere and the soccer player being exposed, I think you can see those are vastly different things (although one could study people who live close to major highways). As I recall, there was more than a slight causal relationship with reasonable mechanisms to cause the effect. Last I heard, nothing was definitive, but there was enough data to be of concern and for medical personnel to issue warnings that were ignored by the tire mulch companies.
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Old 31st January 2017, 08:19 AM   #8
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I predict there are going to be some crazy cancer risks discovered in the next 20 years. A combination of genetics and exposure. Like people with certain genetics who play cancer on artificial turf and eat hotdogs while listening to headphones will have a higher risk of a certain type of cancer not even discovered yet.

I'm sort of kidding, but it just seems like there are possibilities... The cancer I have, ALK+, wasn't even discovered until 2007, and it's a lung cancer known to be common among nonsmokers. Agreed by experts. An age 20 years younger than smokers' lung cancer is also agreed by experts. But like the soccer parents, people with cancer get together and start seeing patterns. Non-smoking seems to be part of a lifestyle cluster of exercising, eating right, and getting lung cancer 20 years before smokers, or at least that's what the ALKies discover, talking together.

You know how people love to see clusters that may or may not be significant? Like, everybody lives near a power plant, and Thelma's three sisters all got cancer, and her neighbor's mother did too, so there must be a risk... Those scientists don't know what they're talking about.

You hear that all the time and it's silly. ALKies are just kind of waiting to see what shows up, because who's going to advise people to stop exercising and start smoking? It's not like telling people not to play goalie on artificial turf.

But I hear these odd cancer claims and wonder if there won't be strange correlations down the road (the road where not too many tires have given off particles, I hope ).

Last edited by Pup; 31st January 2017 at 08:24 AM. Reason: typos
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Old 31st January 2017, 08:40 AM   #9
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Originally Posted by Pup View Post
I predict there are going to be some crazy cancer risks discovered in the next 20 years. A combination of genetics and exposure. Like people with certain genetics who play cancer
I joked that people who play soccer deserve cancer, but if you play cancer, you're pretty much asking for it.
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Old 31st January 2017, 09:13 AM   #10
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Originally Posted by Ziggurat View Post
I joked that people who play soccer deserve cancer, but if you play cancer, you're pretty much asking for it.
LOL! Okay, now I have to invent a game called that, because I've got first dibs on the name.
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