When four athletic fields in New Jersey were recently closed after tests found high levels of lead in their synthetic surfaces, health officials in West Haven became concerned about a facility in their city.

Eric Triffin, West Haven's health director, asked high school officials about the surface of its 19-year-old Ken Strong Stadium. And sure enough, Triffin's office was told the field at the stadium is made from the same nylon-based material that was found to have lead in the New Jersey fields. Triffin said school and city officials are discussing testing the turf.

But if the Astroturf surface at Strong Stadium is hazardous, what are West Haven's options?

"The question is, would we be replacing it with something worse or just as bad?" Triffin said. Triffin's dilemma eventually may be played out all over the state. West Haven's is one of four fields in Connecticut that still have the old generation of artificial turf found to contain high levels of lead. But there is a new generation of artificial turf that has been installed in about 80 municipalities in the state, with more on the way, that is made of crumb rubber - a softer surface created by shredding recycled vehicle tires. Local advocacy groups have been vocal in the past year about their concerns that the crumb rubber could be hazardous to people's health and the environment. The concern over artificial turf has heightened, with Stamford officials closing Boyle Stadium last week after tests showed high levels of lead in samples taken from the old turf.

And there is even further worry, because a bill in the state legislature that would have funded a test to determine whether toxins found in artificial turf are hazardous died at the end of the session, a few days before the Boyle Stadium closing.

"These fields pose a potential for harming children's health," said Nancy Alderman, president of the North Haven-based nonprofit agency Environment for Human Health Inc., which pushed for the bill. "My guess is when they pull that older field out, they're going to put in the crumb rubber. It means they're trading lead for all the components of crumb rubber."

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