Based on a message to customers from the supplier of synthetic turf for the town's four artificial playing fields, the Westport Parks and Recreation Department has expressed confidence that the fields are largely free of lead content.

The green polyethylene fibers that provide most of the cover for the fields in Westport were manufactured without the use of lead in their coloration, according to Sportexe, the Texas-based company with which the town has been under contract for the turf installations.

In a posting on the company's Web site and in a document received by the Parks Department, Stephen Noe, the turf company's president and CEO, said that the "vast majority of the yarns in [its] products have been produced with non-heavy metal based products, for example the green yarns."

"That represents all but a fraction of the turf on our fields," Parks and Recreation Director Stuart McCarthy said in an e-mail exchange with the Westport News this week.

Noe did say that the colors of other yarns "were produced using low levels of lead-chromate-based pigments, but said that "the science indicates that no health issue exists" with those colors.

Nevertheless, he said that in the future the company intends to "substitute

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alternative colors, based on non-heavy-metal pigments. We believe that it is a prudent move from a public relations concern."

"There is a very limited amount, approximately one quarter of 1 percent of the square footage of turf, of yellow lines and red marks on our fields," McCarthy said.

"To date there is no indication from any source that this poses any health risk," he said, adding that the town "has no plans at this time for independent testing related to these fields."

Asked by the Westport News if he is asking the company for a detailed technical analysis of its pigments, McCarthy said, "Yes, we are pursuing additional information from the manufacturer."

He noted that "artificial turf in Westport has provided every one of the benefits represented prior to construction," including, he said, a reduction in water and fertilizer use and "hundreds of hours" saved in maintenance.

"The fields are extremely popular with players, coaches and youth-sports administrators, as they have provided a uniformly excellent playing surface, virtually eliminated rain outs, and provide alternative practice and match sites when the grass sites are closed due to the weather," McCarthy said.

He said that his department would "continue to monitor studies currently under way or available to us in the future. The Town of Westport and the Parks and Recreation Department are committed to providing safe playing surfaces for the community."

Attorney General Richard Blumenthal in a press release on May 1 announced that the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has agreed to investigate potential health and environmental risks linked to lead, hydrocarbons and volatile chemicals found in the materials that make up synthetic-turf fields.

Blumenthal and Connecticut U.S. Rep. Rosa DeLauro had asked the EPA earlier last week to investigate.

"The EPA should complete [its] research as soon as possible," Blumenthal said, and he proposed that the agency target completing an "authoritative study" of turf issues before school sports programs start in the fall.

"The health risks are potentially urgent," Blumenthal said. "Preliminary studies have already revealed troubling possible risks involving lead and dangerous chemicals."

A study last summer by the Connecticut Agricultural Experiment Station, which showed volatile chemicals outgassing and leaching from the synthetic rubber granules on turf fields under relatively mild laboratory conditions, was instrumental in moving Blumenthal to support a study of turf fields by the state Department of Environmental Protection.

Legislation providing $250,000 for that purpose was tabled in the Connecticut Senate last week because of budgetary constraints.

Another federal assessment of turf issues has already begun under the aegis of the U.S Consumer Product Safety Commission, as requested last month by the New Jersey Department of Health and Senior Services (NJDHSS), which earlier in the year had found lead reaching the state's soil contamination level in two nylon-turf fields.

An NJDHSS study this month is expected to shed light on the bioavailability of lead in children from turf fields, as compared with the absorption of lead by children from paint or lead-contaminated soil.