Resident warns fields unsafe

Brooke de Lench, at Concord's new fields next to Route 2, is concerned that air quality will pose health risks to athletes. She urges the town to test pollution before opening the fields. (Joanne Rathe/Globe Staff)

CONCORD - Hundreds of students will play on the new state-of-the-art athletic fields under construction in Concord - which is exactly what worries resident Brooke de Lench.

The $3.8 million artificial-turf playing fields are about 100 feet from Route 2, one of the town's busiest roadways.

"Why would anyone put the kids that close to Route 2?" said de Lench, author of the 2006 book "Home Team Advantage: the Critical Role of Mothers in Youth Sports."

Standing between the highway and the playing fields on a recent morning, de Lench looked at the traffic and said: "It's very, very frightening how close it is."

While lush, suburban Concord may not spring to mind as a community with big air-pollution worries, de Lench fears the air pollution caused by car exhaust will affect students' asthma and respiratory illness rates. She wants the town to test the air quality there before the official opening on June 8.

That concern is shared by state Representative Denise Provost, a Somerville Democrat who introduced a bill this year banning developers from constructing playing fields - as well as housing, schools, day-care centers, and other buildings - within 500 feet of a highway traveled by more than 50,000 cars a day.

Under her proposal, such construction could take place only with a special permit or after an air-quality study.

"Massachusetts does not do a good job monitoring particulate," Provost said in a phone interview. "But the risk is clear."

Somerville, home to busy Interstate 93 and Route 28, has a higher rate of deaths from lung and cardiovascular problems than it should for its population and size, Provost said.

Her bill was sent to a study committee, where it effectively died, but she said she intends to refile it next year.

Concord Town Manager Christopher Whelan said the idea of testing the air quality at the fields has been discussed by the Board of Selectmen, but not seriously considered.

"There have been playing fields on this site for years, and this has never been brought up" as a legitimate health concern, he said.

Even if the town tested the fields, he said, there are no state standards regulating particulate levels.

Instead, town officials are considering keeping students off the fields on days the federal Environmental Protection Agency identifies hazardous air-quality levels.

The fields have been at the center of a battle that has polarized the town. The project required tearing up a portion of school-owned land behind Concord-Carlisle High School that was considered part of Walden Woods.

The proposal upset preservationists who wanted to keep natural the area made famous by transcendentalist poet Henry David Thoreau. Sports boosters who formed the Friends of the Concord-Carlisle Fields called the fields a necessity, as youth sports enrollment has burgeoned.

De Lench opposed construction of the fields at the site, saying the town has plenty of conservation land better situated for playing fields. She raised triplet sons in Concord who played sports on the high school's older fields, also situated near the highway. Two of the three suffered from asthma, she said.

De Lench said the New England Journal of Medicine reported findings by European researchers that exposure to diesel exhaust reduces blood flow to the heart and cited a growing body of research in the United States confirming those findings.

A study by the state environmental affairs director, Suzanne Condon, for example, concluded that athletic field developers "should locate outdoor playing fields as far from busy roads as possible."

"You have to put students' safety at the top of the list," de Lench said.

Erik Jarnryd, a Friends organizer, thinks de Lench simply can't accept the defeat of preserving the woods and seeing artificial-turf playing fields installed. Jarnryd called de Lench a "self-appointed public health expert" who is trying to "shake the tree and see what falls."

A local task force surveyed 35 sites for a new field in the town before deciding on the area abutting Route 2.

"Kids need to get exercise," he said. "I'm more concerned about the noise than the particulate."

Public officials also note that Concord Academy, an expensive private school nearby, recently purchased the former Arena Farms, sprawling acreage that sits adjacent to the new fields and Route 2. Town officials said the land is expected to be developed into playing fields.

Peter Fischelis, chairman of the Concord School Committee, said he thinks concerns about pollution are worthy of consideration, but with the fields nearing completion, come too late.

He said the School Committee voted years ago that the new site was appropriate for playing fields and would not endanger young athletes.

"If you started banning everything near a highway, you wouldn't have much," he said. "Concord is not Mexico City."