Aware of the Massachusetts findings, the city’s consultants — Weston & Sampson — promised in a February 2020 public meeting that the chemicals would not be an issue. In a PowerPoint slide, they said they would “require PFAS-free materials in the bid specifications,” and pledged that they already had documentation from two manufacturers to that end. That included a promise from the company FieldTurf that “Our supplier has confirmed that their products are free of PFAS, PFOS and fluorine.”
Portsmouth ultimately contracted with that company and approved the $3.5 million artificial athletic field.
The conditions comforted Amico, whose family already had elevated levels of PFAS in their blood due to the Air Force base. “I signed my kids up for soccer. I’m thinking, ‘Oh, it’s PFAS-free, it’s great,’” she said. “The city made us feel safe.”
But local advocacy group Non Toxic Portsmouth argued that PFAS-free turf does not exist. On the day the field was being installed, member Ted Jankowski cut samples from rolls of the artificial turf before it could even be put in the ground. Those samples were sent to a lab in Michigan, which found high levels of organic fluorine.
Additional tests ordered by the City Council found multiple compounds, including 135 parts per trillion of PFOS. EPA released a health advisory in June saying just 20 parts per quadrillion was the maximum safe level for that chemical in drinking water (Greenwire, June 15).
Weston & Sampson then asserted that city officials had simply misunderstood their agreement. The bid documents only specify that levels of 30 compounds should be so low they cannot be detected by a particular EPA-approved laboratory method.
That list of 30 compounds includes PFOS, but the EPA-approved laboratory method mentioned in the contract bid is not the same city-ordered test that ultimately uncovered the compound in the turf. So, while advocates want the city to sue Weston & Sampson and the turf manufacturer, city officials say no agreement has been breached.
“We felt and continue to feel, based on the recent testing and results, that the testing performed in the original bid specification was sufficient to determine safety of the product,” Deputy City Manager and Deputy City Attorney Suzanne Woodland said.
Weston & Sampson did not respond to a request for comment. But consultants at the group TRC, which conducted the testing for the city, also told a City Council meeting that the fields pose no risk to players whose skin might come into contact with them. Iannick Di Sanza, director of marketing for FieldTurf, said the company “complied with all of the specification requests and even voluntarily submitted our product for additional testing that was outside of the initial requirements.”
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