SUWON — All artificial turf fields at elementary schools inspected in Gyeonggi Province met environmental safety standards, a provincial research institute said.
The Gyeonggi Institute of Health and Environment said on the 1st that it tested for hazardous environmental substances at 15 elementary schools in Suwon, Yongin, Hwaseong, Gwangju, Anyang and Gunpo, selected jointly with the Gyeonggi Provincial Office of Education.
The survey ran from August through September. It covered seven types of phthalates and four heavy metals — cadmium, chromium, lead and mercury. The combined level of the seven phthalates ranged from 0.009% to 0.033%, with an average of 0.017%. That is far below the 0.1% limit set under KS F 3888-1 (2026), the Korean industrial standard for artificial turf systems.
All heavy metals also came in within limits. The highest concentrations were 0.59 milligrams per kilogram for cadmium, 11.02 mg/kg for chromium, 21.12 mg/kg for lead and 0.036 mg/kg for mercury. The institute said all of those figures were less than half the allowable levels.
Nine of the schools had turf installed more than a decade ago, and those fields also stayed within limits for both phthalates and heavy metals. The institute concluded that even aging turf fields remain in good environmental condition.
"School playing fields are spaces children use often, so safety needs to be checked on an ongoing basis," said Jung Eun-hee, head of the living environment research division at the institute. "We will share the results with the education office and continue monitoring aging facilities."
