A former NHS boss has claimed his footballer son’s cancer could have been caused by playing on synthetic pitches.
Nigel Maguire is calling for a halt on the use of plastic playing fields after his son Lewis, 18, developed Hodgkin’s lymphoma.
Mr Maguire was chief executive of NHS Cumbria until he took early retirement to look after Lewis.
Rubber pellets added to artificial pitches to give them bounce contain toxic chemicals including mercury, lead, benzene and arsenic and there are fears they are causing illnesses in players – particularly goalkeepers who come into closer contact when they dive for the ball.
Mr Maguire, whose goalkeeper son Lewis became ill halfway through a 12-week trial with Leeds United two years ago, said: “He used to come home with his kit covered in the stuff. We’d have to scrape it off.”
“Goalkeepers like Lewis dive dozens of times in training so they breathe it in or swallow it and it gets in their grazes. The more I look into it, the more horrified I am. Anyone who thinks swallowing half a teaspoon a week of that stuff is a good idea is barking mad.”
Mr Maguire, 52, is starting a campaign to raise national awareness of the issue. He has called for a moratorium on building new 3G pitches and wants rugby and goalkeeping training on them banned until more research is done.
“It is obscene so little research has been done,” he said. “This multibillion-dollar industry is conducting an industrial-scale experiment on our kids – it’s a scandal.”
Last month, it was revealed that campaigners in the US have linked synthetic pitch use to more than 150 cancer cases.