The Mystery of the Turf Monster: Is Artificial Turf Causing an Uptick in Sports Injuries?
Where there’s smoke, there’s fire.
Artificial turf has been being implemented into competitive sport for over half a century now. Synthetic grass fields provide lower maintenance costs & weather-proof athletic competitions. You’ll struggle to find a team owner or investor with a negative opinion about synthetic grass -- at the same time, you’ll struggle to find any athlete with a lot of good to say. Baseball players, rugby players, football players, fútbol players – they all hate it.
We hear athletes go on and on about how they prefer to play on real grass, how much harder artificial turf is on their bodies, and how dangerous bad turf can be; but, is there any significant literature that supports their claims?
Of course there is; Where there’s smoke, there’s fire.
MLS players from six different teams were surveyed during the 2011 season. 94-percent of the players identified artificial turf as more likely to cause an injury than grass, pointing to turf’s stiffer surface & higher friction.
Research assessing the biomechanical difference between play on grass to play on turf also points to the higher coefficient of friction of synthetic fields, as well as the relative inability of the turf surface to release a cleat in potentially dangerous situations (Mack et. al, 2019). We’re seeing that running, cutting, and jumping on turf can generate much greater shear force & torque throughout the entire lower extremity due to the way that synthetic grass can grab & hold onto a player’s cleats.
When we look retrospectively at sports injuries & the fields they’ve occurred on, the data is clear – grass is much much safer.
Taking a look at high school athletes, we find that they are 58-percent more likely to sustain some type of musculoskeletal injuries on turf than on natural grass (Paliobeis et. al, 2021).
A systematic review done by Gould & Lostetter earlier this year highlighted the literature on turf vs. grass in all sports, finding that there is a significantly higher rate of foot & ankle injury when playing on synthetic field. Interestingly, to take things a step further, the study also highlighted an increased risk of knee injuries, specifically in high-level American football athletes.
Studies that look specifically at NFL & NCAA football players provide even more clarity; there is a considerable link between artificial turf and knee & ankle injuries, both contact & non-contact (Hershman et. al, 2012 & Loughran et. al, 2019). In NFL players, ligamentous injuries of the knee & ankle have been found to be 22-percent more likely on synthetic fields!
Findings like these have been heavily cited by NFL players as of late. League officials continue to promise that their goal is to make the game safer for its athletes, but that can’t be the case if they continue to allow games on synthetic fields; holding such loose and lenient safety standards.
This past Monday, we saw one of the greats, 4-Time MVP & Future Hall of Famer Aaron Rodgers go down with a pretty nasty Achilles rupture. Surprise, surprise; the injury occurred on a synthetic field.
Rodgers’ injury wasn’t non-contact, and one could easily say that tackle was much more impactful than the turf. But, through our findings, we know that real grass would have allowed more give. In that situation real grass potentially even allows Rodgers’ foot to slide from under him as opposed to being forced into the extremes of it’s range of motion. We’ll never be able to say that turf is the definitive cause of any injury; but, at the very least, we can say that the playing field is an easily controllable risk factor.
Hopefully Rodgers recovers well & can make his way back to the field next season! We would all hate to see such a great career end in heartbreak.
Hopefully the league takes action soon & bans synthetic fields for good! We would all hate to see another one of our favorite athletes go down with a preventable injury.
The evidence is mounting – football should be played on grass!
Works Cited & Further Reading
Poulos, C. C., Gallucci, J., Jr, Gage, W. H., Baker, J., Buitrago, S., & Macpherson, A. K. (2014). The perceptions of professional soccer players on the risk of injury from competition and training on natural grass and 3rd generation artificial turf. BMC sports science, medicine & rehabilitation, 6(1), 11. https://doi.org/10.1186/2052-1847-6-11
Mack, C. D., Hershman, E. B., Anderson, R. B., Coughlin, M. J., McNitt, A. S., Sendor, R. R., & Kent, R. W. (2019). Higher Rates of Lower Extremity Injury on Synthetic Turf Compared With Natural Turf Among National Football League Athletes: Epidemiologic Confirmation of a Biomechanical Hypothesis. The American journal of sports medicine, 47(1), 189–196. https://doi.org/10.1177/0363546518808499
Paliobeis, Andrew BSa,b; Sivasundaram, Lakshmanan MDa,b,c; Knapik, Derrick M. MDa,b,c; Labelle, Mark W. MDa,b,c; Olson, Matthew BSa,b; Karns, Michael R. MDa,b,c; Salata, Michael J. MDa,b,c; Voos, James E. MDa,b,c. Injury incidence is higher on artificial turf compared with natural grass in high school athletes: a retrospective cohort study. Current Orthopaedic Practice 32(4):p 355-360, July/August 2021. | DOI: 10.1097/BCO.0000000000001012
Gould, H. P., Lostetter, S. J., Samuelson, E. R., & Guyton, G. P. (2023). Lower Extremity Injury Rates on Artificial Turf Versus Natural Grass Playing Surfaces: A Systematic Review. The American journal of sports medicine, 51(6), 1615–1621. https://doi.org/10.1177/03635465211069562
Hershman, E. B., Anderson, R., Bergfeld, J. A., Bradley, J. P., Coughlin, M. J., Johnson, R. J., Spindler, K. P., Wojtys, E., Powell, J. W., & National Football League Injury and Safety Panel (2012). An analysis of specific lower extremity injury rates on grass and FieldTurf playing surfaces in National Football League Games: 2000-2009 seasons. The American journal of sports medicine, 40(10), 2200–2205. https://doi.org/10.1177/0363546512458888
Loughran, G. J., Vulpis, C. T., Murphy, J. P., Weiner, D. A., Svoboda, S. J., Hinton, R. Y., & Milzman, D. P. (2019). Incidence of Knee Injuries on Artificial Turf Versus Natural Grass in National Collegiate Athletic Association American Football: 2004-2005 Through 2013-2014 Seasons. The American journal of sports medicine, 47(6), 1294–1301. https://doi.org/10.1177/0363546519833925
