that there is no difference in overall injury risk when playing on in- filled synthetic turf compared to natural grass. In other words, the number of injuries occurring on synthetic
turf and natural turf were comparable. A recent study tracking in- juries to rugby players also found the same result. There was some evidence of different types of injuries occurring on each surface in many of these studies, but because of relatively small sample sizes, results were not considered to be statistically significant. There have been two published studies examining injuries that
occurred during football games, one tracking injuries in high school and the other in college. The high school study tracked injuries suf- fered by high school football players in Texas over a 5-year period. Just as in the soccer studies, overall injury risk was comparable be- tween the playing surfaces. Additionally, this study further broke down injury occurrences into several categories and found several differences. For example, epidermal (skin breaks) and non-contact injuries were found to be more common on infilled synthetic turf while ligament injuries occurred more frequently on natural turf. The same researcher conducted a similar study on collegiate foot- ball injuries and a found a slightly lower overall injury rate on syn- thetic turf compared to grass. While we are unaware of any published scientific research study
showing a higher injury rate on infilled synthetic turf, a report re- leased by the NFL in the spring of 2010 contradicts the results of
>> PennFoot, a device developed at Penn State used to measure rota- tional traction and linear traction on turfgrass.
the previously described studies. The NFL Injury and Safety Panel reported considerably higher incidences of knee and ankle injuries on infilled synthetic turf than on grass. Currently, only an abstract from this study has been released and the full study has yet to ap- pear in a scientific journal. When and if that study becomes avail- able, it will be interesting to compare the complete data set with the other studies that found no difference in injury risk. Injury tracking studies are considered to be the most direct method to study injury risk, but they also suffer from inherent lim-
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