Staph on synthetics: unseen stalker?
17 Sep, 2006 By: Ron Hall Athletic Turf News
An acquaintance that operates a successful lawn care company sought my thoughts on what he feels might be a profitable a business opportunity — disinfecting sports surfaces. Locker rooms. Training rooms, Sports equipment. Synthetic athletic fields.
His antennae are always up for a new way to make a buck. The growing media drumbeat about the danger of infections to athletes from fungi and bacteria at sports facilities piqued his entrepreneurial interest.
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Some of this publicity comes from companies that offer products or services that claim to reduce the chance of athletes being infected with these nasty bugs, including much-feared methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA). This is the free enterprise system functioning as it’s meant to function. The market identifies a problem then offers a product or service to address the problem.
Increasingly, however, the public press has picked up on the issue of athletes contracting infections from the their facilities.
It’s fair to say that the 48-point banner headline across the Sunday, Sept. 24, issue of the Cleveland Plain Dealer newspaper caught the attention of thousands of parents, students, school administrators, athletic directors and coaches in northeast Ohio. You can bet you’ll be seeing similar media coverage in your local newspapers too.
“Staph cases only ‘tip of the iceberg’” shouted the newspaper headline. The article said that several local athletics, professional and high schoolers, had contracted staph infections within recent months. It explained how staph is spread from skin-to-skin contact or from contacting, through openings in the skin, contaminated items.
While evidence is scanty that this is, or may become, a problem on synthetic playing fields (the documented cases of infections so far appear to have occurred in locker and training rooms), the subject is now becoming an issue at all levels of sport. Predictably concern over the issue, have set the wheels of commerce in motion.
AstroTurf LLC reported this past December that it was adding anti-microbial protection onto its synthetic sports fields. Earlier this year, officials at Virginia Tech University and the NFL’s Washington Redskins reported using products to combat the possibility of infections for athletes contracted from locker rooms and training facilities and equipment. This summer NFL Minnesota Vikings became the first team in the NFL to treat its synthetic turf practice field with TurfAide, an antimicrobial marketed to disinfect synthetic fields.
“Our philosophy in sports medicine is to be proactive and create the safest environment possible for our athletes,” said Vikings Head Athletic Trainer Eric Sugarman. “Bacteria, fungi and mold cause a wide variety of issues for our athletes from annoying Athlete’s foot to very serious staph infections like MRSA.”
The question must be asked— is there a justifiable reason for sports turf managers to disinfect (or hire a service to disinfect them) their artificial turf fields to protect players from infections? .
There has been little conclusive evidence so far that any athlete has contracted a serious infection from playing on an artificial turf sports surface. But, then, apart from a study conducted by Penn State University (see coverage in this newsletter), there’s been little research on this particular issue.
Is disinfecting athletic facilities necessary for player safety?
Will disinfecting sports fields (more precisely not disinfecting them) become a liability issue?
Or, given the sorry state of most schools’ and communities’ grounds maintenance budgets, is it an unnecessary expense?
We need more information (accurate, researched, unbiased information) to these questions, and we need them sooner rather than later.
The exploding number of synthetic sports surfaces, in particular the issue of disinfectants, brings yet another challenge to today’s athletic field manager
Editor's note: Educate yourself about staph and its prevention. Visit the Center for Disease Control and Prevention at http://www.cdc.gov/ncidod/dhqp/ar_mrsa_ca_public.html
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