Dianne Woelke, a retired nurse in San Diego, is among the Californians who’ve grown concerned about their neighbors’ synthetic lawns. She joined a group called Safe Healthy Playing Fields to advocate against their use.
“It’s staggering the depth of minutia involved in this product. It’s just a lot of plastic with a lot of chemicals leaching from it,” Woelke said.
One of the bills Newsom signed, for instance, undoes the Brown-era law and allows cities and counties to again ban artificial turf. Some California cities have already begun moving to prohibit fake lawns, including Millbrae in San Mateo County and San Marino in Los Angeles County.
“Emerging research is making it clear that artificial turf poses an environmental threat due to its lack of recyclability and presence of toxins such as lead and PFAS,” said state Sen. Ben Allen, the Redondo Beach Democrat who authored the bill. With the new law “local governments will again be able to regulate artificial turf in a way to both protect our environment in the face of drought and climate change but also by preventing further contribution to our recycling challenges and toxic runoff,” he said.
Manufacturers of synthetic turf say they are working to address concerns about the materials they use, although for the most part they have been unable to entirely remove PFAS. Some have switched to sand and other safer products in an attempt to replace rubber crumb.
“Our members are already working with existing customers, states, and local governments to demonstrate the continued safety of our products and are committed to ensuring their products contain no intentionally added PFAS,” Melanie Taylor, president of the Synthetic Turf Council, wrote in a statement to CalMatters.
Newsom in vetoing the PFAS chemicals bill wrote that he “strongly” supports the intent of the legislation, but he was concerned that the state was not positioned to ensure its effectiveness.
The bill “does not identify or require any regulatory agency to determine compliance with, or enforce, the proposed statute,” he wrote in his veto message.
He also wrote that he’s directing his administration to consult with lawmakers on “alternative approaches to regulating the use of these harmful chemicals in consumer products,” suggesting the issue could return in the next legislative year.