Safety at play: there's more fun to be had when chemistry gets in the game.

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One would hardly expect being knocked unconscious by a foreign object to become a cherished memory. Except when that object happens to be a soccer ball rocketing off the boot of the most famous player in the world. And therein lies a story. A story that begins with the greatest soccer team ever assembled, the Hungarian national team of the early 1950s. The "Magnificent Magyars'" led by the incomparable Ferenc Puskas put together a string of 32 consecutive international victories, a feat that has never been matched. In 1953, they stunned England 6-3 right in Wembley stadium--the first time England had ever been beaten at home by a European side. In the rematch in Budapest, England was embarrassed by a stunning score of 7-1. Little surprise that just about everyone conceded the 1954 World Cup, to be held in Switzerland, to the "Golden Team."

On the way to Switzerland, the team stopped for a training session in Sopron, the town where I was born. My father somehow managed to get us into the practice game, and we were actually allowed to watch from an area beside one of the goals. I don't remember much about the game. Like everyone else, I was focused on Puskas, whose powerful left foot had beaten opposing international goalies 84 times in 85 games. This time though, he missed the net. But he didn't miss my head! I remember the ball coming towards me, and then the next thing I recall is being helped to a bench, and then into a taxi. The next day was another memorable one. My father came home with a present. A soccer ball! Puskas had sent it, he told me, as a souvenir of the "event." Frankly, I think my father bought the ball, but I worshipped it nevertheless.

That ball was nothing like the balls being kicked about today. It was made of leather panels stitched together, with a slit through which a rubber bladder had been stuffed inside. The bladder was inflated with a pump, tied up, and the opening laced shut like a shoe. As I recall, there were a couple of problems with this ball. When it got wet, it became very heavy from the water that was absorbed by the leather. Even worse, after a few months of play, it began to lose its round shape and started to look more like an egg than a ball. To us, none of this mattered much. After all, we had a ball to play with. And what a ball! One that had (maybe) been touched by the great Puskas!

At the time I didn't realize that this ball was already a product of a great deal of evolution. The ancient Chinese kicked around a leather ball stuffed with animal hair and cork, and sometime in the Middle Ages, the British made the first inflatable bouncing ball. Actually, whether it is appropriate to call an inflated pig bladder a "ball" is debatable, but that is just what was used in medieval kicking games that often involved whole villages. Meanwhile, in South America, natives had discovered that the latex oozing out of certain trees could be formulated into small bouncing balls. These "rubber" balls were sticky, however, and quickly lost their shape.

Along came Charles Goodyear in 1836 with his rubber "vulcanization" process. Goodyear discovered that heating latex together with sulfur made the material much less sticky and more resilient. As chemists would later learn, the reason was that sulfur atoms form bridges between the long molecules of natural rubber, allowing these to return to their original shape after being stretched. Goodyear made hundreds of rubber products ranging from hats to calling cards, and in 1855, he made the world's first vulcanized rubber soccer ball. The ball, now on display at the National Soccer Hall of Fame in Oneonta, NY, was made of rubber panels glued together at the seams and was used in 1863 for one of the first known organized soccer games in the U.S. A monument to commemorate this epic event stands on the Boston Common where the game was played.

In England, they were still blowing up pig bladders, but William Gilbert, a boot maker, hit upon the idea of a protective leather covering. And then H. J. Lindon took the progressive step of replacing the pig bladder with one made of Goodyear's vulcanized rubber. Lindon was supposedly motivated by his wife's death from a lung disease caused by blowing up too many pig bladders! Soon ball manufacturers found that using leather from the rump of a cow made for a stronger ball, and that interlocking panels that ran in different directions allowed the ball to keep its round shape.

Then in the 1940s, chemistry kicked in. Researchers at Standard Oil discovered that isobutylene, a substance derived from petroleum, could be polymerized to make a synthetic rubber which went by the name of "butyl rubber." This was essentially impermeable to air, putting an end to the frustrating task of constantly inflating soccer balls. Butyl rubber also made automatically sealing valves possible, eliminating the need for a laced opening. And then the real revolution came. Synthetic leather, made of waterproof polyurethane or polyvinyl chloride, replaced leather, and eliminated the problem of balls gaining weight when wet. Layers of cushioning fabrics were soon added between the bladder and the covering, which was now constructed of 20 hexagonal and 12 pentagonal panels stitched together with polyester cord, ensuring perfect roundness. The 2006 World Cup led to yet another innovation. A ball made of only 14 thermally bonded panels was introduced, with virtually no seams, improving bounce and accuracy. While I appreciate the science behind these balls, they certainly don't have the same emotional appeal for me as the deformed, battered leather ball I had to leave behind when we escaped from Hungary in 1956.

Puskas also found greener pastures in 1956, launching a second spectacular career with Real Madrid in Spain. Unfortunately, he had failed to lead Hungary to the expected World Cup in 1954. After decimating the opposition in the preliminary rounds, and being up 2-0 in the final, the Golden Team, with Puskas hobbled by an injury, lost to Germany 3-2. I remember listening to the game on the radio, with the "Puskas" ball at my feet. When Germany scored that third goal, it was like, well, like being hit in the head with a Puskas shot.

That World Cup, as all the others, was played on a grass field. But that may change in the future. At the under-20 World Soccer Championships recently played in Canada, we witnessed something that we have never seen in the World Cup. We saw games played on artificial turf. The turf looked like grass, and according to the players, almost felt like grass. What a difference from the first synthetic playing surface developed by Monsanto back in the 1960sl "ChemGrass" (back then, the "chemical" connection was still used in a positive way) was made by melting together nylon pellets and a pigment, and then extruding the hot mix through spinnerets to produce ribbons that could be woven into a fabric. It was durable enough, but it was no fun falling on it, even though the nylon carpet was supported by a soft foam layer of polyurethane. When it was installed in Houston's Astrodome as "AstroTurf," ballplayers had to add "carpet burn" and "turf toe" to their vocabulary. But nobody expressed fears that the turf would launch a chemical attack against the players running all over it.

The possibility of such chemical warfare emerged as a consequence of attempts to improve upon the original artificial turf. In the 1990s, Field Turf, a Canadian company, came up with a novel approach. Out went the stiff nylon fibres--in came soft, elastic polyethylene fibres lubricated with silicone oil. These were tufted into a rubberized plastic mat, just like a giant shag rug. The "tour de force," though, was the "infill" composed of sand and granules of rubber that kept the fibres upright and provided shock absorbency. Old rubber tires and athletic shoe soles were frozen and ground up to provide the required pellets, and inadvertently, the problems.

The problems revolve around chemicals released from the rubber fill material. Various lead, arsenic, and cadmium compounds are used in rubber manufacture and can leach out from the granules into the soil and surrounding water ways, potentially causing harm to aquatic organisms. But of greater concern is the release of polyaromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) such as benzopyrene, which are known carcinogens. These are present in rubber as a consequence of the addition of "carbon black" as a reinforcing agent for automobile tires.

Carbon black, which of course is the reason that tires are black, is made by high temperature treatment of a petroleum fraction, a process that also results in PAH formation. Some of these compounds can evaporate as the hot sun beats down on an artificial surface, exposing players to potentially carcinogenic vapours. There is also concern that dust from the rubber pellets can trigger allergies and asthma. And if that weren't enough, some studies have shown that the fearful methicillin resistant staphylococcus A bacteria (MRSA) survive better on,polyethylene than on other surfaces, and can cause infections when players suffer turf burns. So while the new surfaces may look like grass, and even feel like grass, they don't necessarily behave like grass.