3/14/25 Webinar: Environmental Health Impacts of Artificial Playing Fields and Rubber Playground Surfaces
The Mid-Atlantic Center for Children's Health and the Environment (MACCHE)
invites you to an upcoming webinar.
Date: March 14, 2025
Time: 12 noon ET
Webinar participants who complete the evaluation and obtain an 80% or higher on the course post-test will receive a certificate for 1 nursing contact hour.
An overview of the scientific and medical evidence about lead, other heavy metals, and chemicals used in artificial turf and synthetic playground surfaces, and the impact of those exposures on children. The presentation will include the myths and realities regarding the benefits and risks of these products, whether used indoors or outdoors.
About the Presenter
Dr. Diana Zuckerman, PhD, is President of the National Center for Health Research, a nonprofit public health think tank that conducts and analyzes research on a wide range of healthcare and health policy issues and uses the results to inform policies, programs, and services affecting the health of adults and children. She has testified about the safety and effectiveness of medical and consumer products before U.S. Congressional Committees; federal agencies; state legislators; the Canadian Parliament; and has briefed Canadian and European officials and nonprofit organizations in the U.S. and abroad.
On issues pertaining to the safety of artificial turf, playground surfaces, and similar indoor products, she was a key speaker at a national CDC meeting on lead exposure and testified at two national meetings of the Consumer Product Safety Commission and at hearings and meetings of the EPA and state and local government policy makers.
Trained as a post-doctoral fellow in epidemiology and public health at Yale Medical School, Dr. Zuckerman served on the faculty of Vassar and Yale and as a research director at Harvard. She left academia to work on Capitol Hill as an AAAS Congressional Science Fellow and subsequently worked for a dozen years as a Congressional staffer in the U.S. House of Representatives and Senate and was a senior policy advisor in the White House. While in her current position, she was also a fellow at the University of Pennsylvania Center for Bioethics and was the first non-physician elected to the Women in Medicine International Hall of Fame. She previously chaired Maryland鈥檚 Women鈥檚 Health Promotion Council and served on the CMS Medicare Evidence Development & Coverage Advisory Committee (MEDCAC) and the Board of Directors of the Reagan-Udall Foundation. She is a founding Board Member of the nonprofit Alliance for a Stronger FDA, a coalition of industry and nonprofit organizations that educates Congress about the work of the FDA. She has test She is the author of five books, 13 Congressional reports, and dozens of book chapters and articles in medical and academic journals and newspapers, has appeared in numerous documentaries on health issues, and is widely quoted in the media.
Learning objectives:
Name the chemicals and metals in artificial turf and rubber playground surfaces that are most likely to harm human health.
Describe what is known and not known about the short-term and long-term risks to children and the environment.
Explain the risks and benefits of alternatives, including natural grass and engineered wood fiber.