Heavyweight Infill Systems Once Again Proven Safest for Football
Montreal, Canada, January 5th, 2015 – For more than 20 years, FieldTurf has focused on providing athletes not only with the highest performing surfaces, but also the safest. The most recent data of an ongoing safety study on synthetic turf corroborates this; confirming, once again, the importance of heavy infill weight as it relates to player injuries. This new data is even more conclusive than the initial results last published in December of 2014, showing an even lower incidence of injury between heavyweight >9 pound per square foot systems and other systems with 3-5.9 pounds per square foot.
The prospective cohort study entitled ‘Incidence, Mechanisms, and Severity of Game-Related High School Football Injuries Across Artificial Turf Systems of Various Infill Weight – A Four-Year Study’, consists in the analysis of injury-related data from high school games played on artificial turf. The latest data was taken from 1,163 competitive season and playoff games, from 2010-2013. The study concludes that “as the artificial infill surface weight decreased, the incidence of game-related high school football trauma significantly increased across numerous playing conditions.”
FieldTurf >9 lbs. /sq. ft. vs. other surfaces with 3-5.9 lbs. /sq. ft. of infill weight:
Injury Type
Concussions Injuries Combined: 8.3% lower incidence of injury
Total Injuries: 20.5% lower incidence of injury
Severe Injuries: 16.8% lower incidence of injury
Player-to-Turf Collision: 17.8% lower incidence of injury
Conditions
Adverse Weather Conditions: 26.3% lower incidence of injury
Turf Age (8+ years): 72.7% lower incidence of injury
Turf Age (4 to 8+ years): 33.8% lower incidence of injury
Today's new generations of artificial turf systems are being installed to duplicate or exceed playing characteristics of natural grass. Rather than playing on the polyethylene turf fibers, player to surface interaction actually occurs between the individual and the various proprietary sand/rubber infill compositions of varying weight.