A retired biologist stimulates the alarm of toxic chemicals that could make their way in the environment Surrey sports fields.
John Werring, an expert in fish and fauna housing, says that the problem is large volumes of “crumbs rubber” which has been scratched from artificial grass fields to Hjorth Road Park when the city has released them snow. The crumb rubber is used in artificial lawn fields as an absorbent of shock.
While the heaps of cleaned snow were founded, they left small rubber pearls of crumbs – which are made from recycled car tires – in heaps.
Rubber Crumb, which was scratched from Surrey sports fields during the snow clearing.
Global News
“It’s raining, he’s playing all the equipment and dropping him into storm drains,” he told Global News.
“And the storm sewers are what leads to the habitat of fish.”
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Werring’s concern is a chemical called 6ppd-quinone which is used in car tires to prevent them from cracking.
Research has linked the chemical to fish moldsespecially in juvenile coho salmon.
“When they left and measured the just runoff of the street, not to mention heaps like that, they noticed that the fish that are exposed … would die in a few hours, this toxic”, Werring said.
Werring said his name was the city to complain, but no one came to erase the heaps of rubber materials.
The city of Surrey says that batteries are the result of snow clearance work, and that its usual practice is to bring the crumb back to playgrounds once the snow has melted.
“The filling equipment used on the artificial grass fields of Surrey is tested to confirm the composition of the equipment and tested against provincial and national standards to ensure security,” the city said in a statement.
“In addition, the city has a series of capture basins and slit drains in place which are designed to pick up any migrant material before being able to make its way to fishing.”
But Werring said that after two weeks, the damage was caused, and that there is no “absolutely no doubt” equipment had gone to a neighboring stream.
“If someone saw me taking a scoop full of this material and throwing it into a storm drain and that he called the regulation officer, the regulation officer would breathe in my neck and will likely settle down,”, Werring said.
“And here we have the city itself entering this type of installation and no action.”
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