 officially calling to order the third meeting of the artificial tour study committee on December 19th 2023 at 5 p.m. or a little after 5 p.m. Natasha why don't you start by calling the roll? Yes, absolutely. Jim D'Atilio. Here. Great. Natasha Whedon here. Mike Gilgame. I'm just going to check the waiting one again. Nothing yet. Okay. Um Leslie Meir. Here. Joe Barr. Here. Jill. Here. Marvin. Here. Joe Conley. Here. David Morgan. Yeah. And I just want to revisit the... I don't see anyone else in the waiting room so we're still waiting but all others are here. Excellent. So we have a quorum clearly and the minute we see Mike we'll try to get him on but so I think first order of business other than seeing who's here is acceptance of the meeting minutes. I hope everyone had a chance to look at the minutes that were circulated last Friday. I thought they were true and accurate but did anyone have any corrections or anything before we take a vote? Okay. Natasha I guess call the roll again. Do we have a motion to approve? Yes, of course. Is there a motion to approve the minutes? Motion to approve the minutes. Okay. Who seconded that? Marvin. Okay. Okay. Let me just write this down. Okay. Mike is still not with us yet. Okay. Leslie. Yes. Joe Barr. Yes. Jill. Yes. Natasha. Yes. Marvin. Yes. Jim. Yes. Great. So that is a six out of the seven and they are approved. Okay. So moving on to correspondence received. Natasha can I think give us an update on that but I would ask Natasha in addition to giving us an update on recording. Oh I see Mike emerging. An update on not just correspondence received but what we're going to be doing about recording going forward. Yes. So I'll address the recording first if that's okay. So I spoke with the town's PIO who is Joan Roman and when we she was on vacation the week that we discussed the recording and then posting on behalf of the town it turns out it's a little bit more complicated than just you know being able to record and post. So we are going to record the meetings and I believe Joan was reaching out to ACMI to see if they would be willing or wanting to be the sort of host agency of these meetings best very similar to what they do with the select board meetings and other meetings that are recorded. There's just too many boards and commissions that the town can't really serve in that fashion to you know post all of the different meetings via their website. So that was sort of the response that I got so I apologize to the committee that I may have had some some incorrect information last week but I do think that there's still a way that we can ensure that that this information is out there. We'll continue to do the meeting minutes continue to record. Just don't think we're going to be able to post them to the town website in the way I understand it is that there can be a link on our site that then links to the ACMI client. So I think that's what we'll plan to do moving forward. So bottom line the meetings will still be recorded and they still will be available to the public. It's just not quite in the way we originally envisioned. And in terms of correspondence received just doing two hats here. Correspondence received. We did get a I provided everyone with the comments from the chat from the last week's meeting and I apologize this was out of order. We had an email from Susan Chapnick that was sent on Monday December 11th that actually should have gone before the chat comments. My apologies for not having any chronological order. And I put the packet out to everyone on Friday a little bit before noon. So any correspondence I got after 5 p.m. on Thursday of last week would not be included in this week's meeting. It would be included on the next week's meeting. I just I couldn't get the time to have enough time. I'm not the one who's posting them and I have to go through a process of you know Joan Roman and what have you. So it's a little bit out of my hands and I just have to make sure that it's in the right person's hands to get them posted. So is there any thoughts questions concerns discussion we want to have on correspondence. No I mean I think so far keeping the chat open has worked well. It hasn't it's been effective without being abused. So I feel like we will continue with that at least at least through this meeting and my intention is to keep it going as long as we can. And I do find it helpful. So thank you for those who do you know judiciously put things up there. And also for those who have been taking advantage of the separate method of you know separate correspondence you know I certainly read everything and appreciated all of it. So and then I would just sort of remind everyone. I mean there's not much need for this considering we're recording it ourselves but to the extent someone independently is recording these meetings open meeting law requires you know notification to me if you're doing so so I can essentially let the rest of the committee know. So if anyone does ever plan on doing that please come to me first. So with all that said now we can move to the real substance of the meeting and I'm sorry it's happening at 518 as opposed to you know 505 but we'll jump into it now. So it's the working group updates and my understanding is that all groups have met. Please don't make a liar of me on this one but I think that's what I heard and I heard actually some of the meetings were very effective. So we'll start with the health group if they would love to like to give us an update on how their first meeting went and you know basically I mean items three four and six may all three four and five may all kind of blend together but so you know feel free to talk about agreement of topic areas and working groups and some of the guidelines you might have discussed about conducting research don't feel bound to not cover those. So but I'd like to just really leave it up to the the groups to report out. So health which is Natasha Marvin and Jill. Great so I'm going to try to take notes and do this at the same time so probably going to defer to Jill and Marvin a little bit to talk more but I'll just give you a brief overview. Our group we were able to meet on Saturday. It was a very good session. We started talking about you know some of the different topic areas and what the concerns might be. Just an over a quick highlight. We talked about chemicals. We talked about PFAS, PFOS, VOC's, semi-VOC's, PHS, mold, bacteria, metals, heat related illness, physical and mental health as it pertains to accessibility of fields and we know that we need to drill down a little bit more. Then we talked a little bit about exposure, the roots and those types of things and including that in our conversation. Jill and Marvin I don't want to take over so I'm going to let you guys add on and I'm just going to take notes. Sure. Yeah no I mean that that pretty much covers it as an overview. I mean one of the things that we really want to look at is exposure. There's not a whole lot of data on that. I'm in the process of trying to contact some people who've been doing research on artificial turf to see what if anything they have. Like I said before, we don't always have the scientific knowledge that we'd like to make decisions and so we're just going to do the best we can with the materials that we can access. Obviously if there are holes in that we're going to that will be part of our report to the bigger group. And I think the other important pieces we were going to look at the current practices for maintaining the grass fields and compare the you know have a sense of those chemicals versus what would be present in the turf. Right I've made a request to Mike Rademacher to get you know more detailed information on that. You know Joe provided me with some basic information and application schedule but I just you know want to get you know a little bit more detailed information on exactly what's being used so thank you Joe for that. Yeah and that raises a good point. I mean this is you know you know these working groups are truly working groups so don't feel held back in any way from going out of there and you know shaking the trees and seeing you know if you need answers on things reaching out to the town or reaching out to the folks outside the town you know you know do get the answers wherever you think you know you need to find them and we'll you know be interested in what responses you get. But it does sound like you're off to a strong fast start which is which is good. I mean I mean anything else health group wants to talk about right now. Well I think you get extra points from meeting on a Saturday especially Natasha who you know it's not a work day for you so we just need to make it work. Yeah well I appreciate it. So the safety group which is me Leslie and Joe and Joe I think is joining us by phone right now. We squeeze in a meeting today you know sort of cramming for the final exam. We got it in ahead of the wire but we met we met at noon and had a very I think thoughtful and good meeting and I don't know if I mean I can say some things but I don't know if Leslie and Joe want to only I'll say something initially and then I'd rather Leslie and Joe do the talking because I think you hear enough from me at these meetings. I think we sort of had an initial agreement in terms of focal focal areas for the safety group that the two key areas would be looking at the differences between turf and artificial turf fields as they affect you know bodily injuries so that would within bodily injuries everything from you know you know concussions and ACL tears and skin skin issues you know anything sort of body related whether it's surface or internal and then separately although of course there's some overlap looking at the differences between turf and artificial turf as they affect heat issues which you know there may be some overlap with potentially the environmental group but Leslie was I think important importantly point out we're not looking at necessarily the heat island effects which would be more probably of an environmental group that overall you know carbon footprint of these of these fields our focus would be more you know the the people effects the human effects on and potentially more than human could potentially wildlife too but you know the the effects that the fields the heat effects they potentially have on you know living creatures which should cover everything so that was sort of our initial agreement about just the focal points and there may be some studies that look at all of that and there may be some studies that go down a particular road and then we sort of shifted our discussion to research pathways and and kind of how we might go about this and I'll be quiet now and maybe let Leslie or Joe chime in well yeah we we've tried to look at the studies you know evidence based and peer reviewed studies in the areas that that Jim was talking about you know it can it can get a little tricky because the focus really of the studies has been high level athletes athletics at a professional or a collegiate level and there really hasn't been the type of study at least that we've been able to find so far but we're going to keep on looking into safety around youth and recreational level activities one thing we are going to try to look at is have some discussions with our high schools and see what their experiences have been at the artificial turf level because we do have two artificial turf fields in town and you know we discussed quite a bit around the generational differences in artificial turf you know what we're seeing is some of the the studies that have been done looked at early generation the the astro turf years but the technology has evolved and so you know we want to look at how the new generation of athlete you know both from a from a maintenance standpoint on grass fields as well as artificial turf fields and whether we can find any specific information related to that and Joe you were going to contact who are your contacts that you were going to try to reach out to to get some information yeah so thanks Leslie I did reach out to both the athletic directors already and they were going to look and see if they had any internal information based on on their own athletes injuries but then also going to reach out to the MIA to see if there was any kind of Massachusetts data on injuries and then where they occurred whether it was a natural grass field an artificial grass field also again maybe I'm jumping have we also started you know reaching out to some people in the field and find out you know whatever they could send us on any any new information out there on safety data that was either you know scientific study or peer reviewed or whatever will take care of filtering through that portion of it but whatever information they could start to gather and send to us on the safety portion so you know we're we're shaking the trees a little bit seeing where we you know Joe and Leslie have both the benefit and the drawback of they've they've done a lot of research in this through the years themselves so finding new material is sort of a challenge but something we're going to try to do I'm less steeped in the research here so I have some catch up reading to do over the next the next few weeks but as well as some you know you know looking for new pathways myself in terms of the research so yeah I think we're off to a strong start at least in that in the safety group so last but certainly not least the environmental group which I believe is Mike and Joe and David correct good evening as was discussed there are lots of studies out there one of the things we were able to do by email we weren't able to actually get together but there are three or four main topic areas that we feel need some attention and one of them is the actual onsite effects of of the grass itself the infill and other components of the artificial turf and the second part is the runoff or potential damage from the runoff from the fields from whatever the components are we're looking at the issue of heat was mentioned before and that obviously is something that is of concern to the environment and to the critters and others that come in contact with it the other thing that that it hasn't been mentioned yet is the climate change resilience in other words looking at the temperature differences between artificial turf and natural grass and looking at the impact of those those particular changes or the variation there and also is soil health and biodiversity and obviously the impact on critters in the water and the runoff from the runoff as well as the turf itself so there's several main categories of concern here and we agree that we want to find those references that are peer reviewed scientifically based and we will be hopefully expanding our discussions in the next week or two whatever we can the other thing I just mentioned is that David you may want to comment on the timing we'll be losing David at some point in the coming weeks and so we'll have to think if Joe Barr and I want to continue or we want to recruit a new face to the to the environmental committees. David did you want to add anything to that or Joe? I think it's a great summary you'll just add the context that I'm going parental leave shortly so I'll be absent but I have asked Natasha and Jim for some guidance about how to proceed with my role in this committee so we'll have a determination later on. Do you know any thoughts? No I think that was a great great summary of what we did by email. Yeah so you know I know we've kind of already drifted into you know items four and five and I think maybe it's it's worth taking a couple minutes just to talk about kind of bigger picture so in terms of timing. So one of the things I was thinking was I think we already sort of established we there was not any interest in meeting next week I can't imagine why there would be you know so I think our working assumption was that we would restart these meetings on January 2nd but January 2nd is a tough day it's the first day back for most people from the holiday break I have a feeling people will be exhausted by the end of that day and I'm not sure you know how much work will have happened between here and there so what I was going to propose was that our next official meeting be January 9th which is the following Tuesday at 5 p.m. and that the week the first week of January the working groups continue to meet and and do their you know keep chugging along there because I think that's probably more fruitful at this point than us just having a meeting to have a meeting and there'll be more to report out on on January 9th so we would take a two week hiatus from this group from the official committee but the you know subgroups would you know if you want to meet next week you can but I'm assuming more you know the first week of January is when they would reconnect and and and follow up on the on the progress they've made so unless someone disagrees I think that's the plan of how we'll go forward but then that leads to sort of just a question about timing and planning so one of the things you know I'll just speak for the safety group for a second but this might have been initially came up with others you know the timing is tight as we all know but it's doable in terms of you know a big push in the new year we really need to have a strong kind of you know eight to ten weeks coming out of kind of coming out of new years I think that's if we meet regularly and continue to stay on the path we're on I think it's certainly doable but one of the things I think we just need to be cognizant of in terms of the timing is uh it's one thing to sort of read studies or reach out to people with phone calls and that's that can sort of be done you know anything right you can read a study on a Saturday afternoon if you want um the larger question is if we do want to have uh you know human testimony uh to to the to the committee and I would think that probably would happen more in like February um to the extent people want that or are interested in that it will probably take time to find the right people and nail them down on a date that works for them so I would although I'm not advocating for this I know that's a possible option for for the committee or something proposed by the subgroups all I would say is the sooner you start doing outreach and and you know potential scheduling with those folks the better because February is going to be here people with busy schedules February will be here you know faster than we think and uh if we want to kind of hear from them in a public meeting um you know I think that would be helpful and you know I guess my dream vision I'm not saying this is what what happened is each of the subgroups would potentially have you know one or two people they'd want us to hear from and if all went well maybe wait each of them would get their own you get their own meeting to do so I mean maybe not the whole meeting would be for them but you know each of them would be spread out over three weeks in February and um each of the subgroups speakers and you know that could be fruitful but you know I'm not saying we need to have that I'm just putting it out there if we go that route the sooner we could start planning the better and I mean did I know in safety we kind of kicked around a few names potentially or people who fit a certain profile we would want to hear from did other groups start thinking about this it's okay if you haven't I don't know is there interest going down that road from other groups possibly one question is would we be able to arrange video conferencing for people who don't live locally oh I think yeah certainly I think we could certainly accommodate that it's probably actually easier for us yeah I think that Jim that sounds reasonable in terms of setting up the speakers as soon as possible for late January or February sometime I think that makes a lot of sense and just point out that you know we we're good I don't know how you want to describe who who gets to choose the the speakers but I assume each subgroup can pretty much choose an individual or two that they feel will contribute yeah I mean the way I envision is you know there's the working groups we kind of nominate one or two people and you know we vet them as the larger committee I don't necessarily see the larger committee putting the kibosh on them but you know we just want to be sure there's not overlap or repetition or you know we're having one person speak for multiple topics so and I'm not necessarily thinking we're going to have another artificial turf form you know that's not my my vision I don't think I just don't think that would necessarily be the right path for us at this point we already had that it's it's sort of a more granular deep dive you know on a couple of targeted areas um and frankly you know although the turf form was helpful to some degree I think one of the top acts of that form was people didn't get a chance to take the deep dive or get you know often their questions you had to put out profound thoughts and you know 30 seconds or less which was good for that particular format keeping order but you know for a group like us that really is trying to get you know get to a level of of granularity on these things I think it we have the time and energy to take a deeper dive so so that's one thing I wanted to put out there um the other is um and I don't necessarily want to like open this up too much uh but you know we were having this conversation a safety group even though it wasn't necessarily it was sort of at the end of our meeting but it wasn't it's more probably an issue with health in our environment but you know I would say there's a lot of there's definitely notable studies out there about about um and I don't want to put words in like Joe or Leslie's mouse because this is where they sort of brought this issue up and I was very receptive to it um I mean there seems to be a lot of studies about about artificial turf with crumb rubber filling and there's you know I think we need to read some of those studies obviously to the extent we haven't people in this committee haven't read them already but I think there is certainly more interest in seeing and unfortunately I think there aren't as many but more interest in learning more about artificial turf that has none crumb rubber filling uh you know the other fillings the more you know hesitate to use word organic filling as a more of the comparator to regular turf that's not to say we shouldn't look at you know the crumb rubber filling I just don't want us to spend tons and tons of time looking into something where feel like you know if you read one or two or three studies you probably get the get the picture on the crumb rubber filling pretty quickly I don't know if we need to read 79 studies that tell us the same thing when you know we're really interested sort of in an area where there isn't as much information which is about the alternative fillings am I being clear on this I hope I'm not uh does this make sense to folks sure yeah it seems like it seems like it's it's fairly common knowledge with all of us that the crumb rubber doesn't seem to be the best infill and so if we're sort of already all kind of agreeing to something like that yes it's important to understand why and and what have you and we need to document it but I think if we can spend more time on looking at some of the other infills to to really flush some of that out that may seem like it would be a little bit more helpful and I think something that maybe the forum and other things weren't exactly able to cover as much right I agree with that Natasha that makes sense to me because I think as Jim was saying there have been a lot of studies a lot of publicity and a lot of information out there about crumb rubber it would be interesting to see what the other options are and what their potential impacts might be in comparison both to crumb rubber and to natural turf yeah and we may find they're not they're no better or only marginally better and that's important for us to know but I mean I I just don't want us to get sucked into you know doing a lot of research and something where there may not be a huge you know you read one study about crumb rubber maybe you read them all you know and there may just not be a huge appetite among this group to even you know go down the crumb rubber path you know when this other path that may have some interesting potential but we just don't know enough about it is where we really should be focusing more of our research so that's just that's just the thought anyone else want to sort of chime in on you know research pathways you know a working group kind of you know options going forward I mean I don't feel you need to but I'm just sort of open to while we still have a few you know we still have a long runway in front of us trying to make some longer term decisions about maybe where we're going with all of this I just think that if we're gonna look at an alternative to crumb rubber we may want data about crumb rubber like some sort of comparison chart because I those alternatives are gonna evolve and I don't think we want to come out with this thing that like corn husks is the best or whatever that whatever they're made of and then have a next generation so I think saying like here's the problems with crumb rubber here is like the alternative that's commonly used now that way we leave room for future alternatives that are even better the evolution right and this goes to Leslie's point about you know we can read studies about astroturf right and you know maybe we still should look at them right but we shouldn't obsess over them right because no one's making astroturf anymore at least to my knowledge I don't really think the astros are making astroturf anymore so so you know I mean you have to sort of it's all helpful to get perspective but we really should be focusing on kind of where the technology is now and where the industry is moving and you know as much as we can sort of focus on where they are and where they're going right I think that's right you know I think the question is what are the other options that are out there that are economically and environmentally feasible and how do we know what their impacts may be and because some of them are pretty new it may be hard to find any credible research on but it's worth a look yeah yeah for example you know I I do know you know it's a very specific example but the Cotting School in Lexington has an artificial turf field that is that it abuts a wetland and so they went they went through the Lexington Conservation Commission and their infill is I believe coconut husk I mean they are they were required to look at an organic infill so they're not doing crumb rubber so you know we may have for example a neighbor Lexington and maybe you know some some evidence in the Lexington Conservation Commission that was done to make that determination um there might be information there that that they studied um because Joe and I did go out there last year and and we saw their artificial field and it's right beside this you know beautiful cat tail swamp I mean it really it goes right up to the cat tails so you know there may be information there right next door that might help us to inform some of those questions about you know did they look at what other infills did they look at and how did they you know settle on the coconut husk as as their infill I I think one thing related to that is because that will probably be of interest to both the environmental and and health groups is um how do we do this without having multiple people calling them up and asking them for stuff we should figure out a way to kind of you know minimize the amount of aggravation we caused them in the progress in the in the process good point I mean they may have there may be I mean we haven't really looked there may be uh public information since it you know much like what we do their public body their conservation commission so there may already be information that we can mine out of um the lexington conservation commission yeah I would suggest looking at their website and see if there is a report there before we start uh all calling right yeah that's them all um and I do want to I saw a comment in the comment in the chat and I was sort of where I was going with this anyway which was I don't want anyone to think like because we're talking about you know alternative infill that that automatically means like oh we we assume that if you just change the infill the turf is suddenly magically you know perfect um that's we're still going to be looking at this turf through all the other lenses we just discussed you know tonight you know the heat effects the the you know runoff effects the the health the chemicals you know everything and there's a lot more going on there than just what's in the infill um I just I'm bringing this up because you know it seemed like that was a part of the turf forum that kind of got short circuited that they never really got to go into a level of depth that I think some in the audience would have liked hearing more about and some of it may be just because there hasn't been an ability to have a lot of information on that yet but um I think this is the type of committee that can take a closer look at something that maybe the forum came up a little short on before I sort of move on to just a different other another aspect is everyone fine with that point okay you know in terms of sort of the high I think we talked about the hierarchy of of you know studies or information you know in our safety group we talked about you know obviously and I think you know Susan Chapnick mentioned this in her in what she submitted prior to the last for this in advance of this meeting you know you know you got to look at these studies you got to kind of ask a bunch of questions right but I think you know the gold standard would be you know government funded government study peer review that would be my view at least I don't know if others have a different view there may not be that many studies that fit that particular uh criteria but you know obviously you know just because something's an industry study doesn't mean it's not worth the paper it's printed on and it's not just because something's a government study that it's you know the coin of the realm but you know in general uh was there sort of discussion about within the groups about preferences I mean you try to read everything you can but was there sort of preferences about the kind of weight you put on certain research over others because I do envision you know when this is all said and done you know we're going to have a heck of an appendix to whatever we put out and the appendix is going to be everything we look to good bad or indifferent and you know I want to be able to defend everything we put in the appendix and Jim I think when I hear you say that I'm thinking like you know it's really important to know what's in the materials so of course we have to go to industry to figure out what they're putting in the artificial turf we're not necessarily going there to get the science information but if we know what the components are what they're made up of then we can go and start doing the research on these other you know these these peer reviewed these government agencies on those types of things and come to our own conclusions I don't I think that so in my mind right we have to have a basic understanding of the artificial turf and how it works and and what have you and all the components and then we need to be able to sort of in our own minds contemplate or research fully what that means then but I don't think that that is necessarily going to come from like an industry perspective and it shouldn't come from an industry perspective it's I don't that's how I'm looking at what you're saying is that am I summarizing that I mean sometimes industry may have some very interesting data that's worth looking at in the proper context of course but you know I don't think we should have any blanket you know we're not going to read this or we're not going to read this I mean you read everything right but in terms of reference is there a general feeling that you know something that's peer reviewed government funded would probably be at the top of the hierarchy and you know something maybe towards the bottom of the hierarchy would be non peer reviewed industry funded I mean I think peer reviewed and also potentially excuse me published yeah you know in a journal or something like that yeah and I wouldn't even though I spent much of my career working for government I wouldn't necessarily preference a government study there's plenty of government agencies out there that could produce junk and plenty of non government agencies or you know public health professionals and other settings that can produce really good stuff no offense Natasha I'm not including Arlington and so yeah I think it's more about the peer review and actually getting it published somewhere legitimate so I think we're going to have to probably do a little bit of research on our like you know when we see an author like okay well let's find out more about this author and see if we're right someone who's doing independent research or they you know where they're coming from so unfortunately at this point I think we have to kind of do our do a little bit of our at least of our own quality control right I think that's that's a good point Joe and I go along with that I think we need to know who's giving us what research data and where they're coming from what about dates because when I kind of started with looking at either university programs in terms of management and seeing where they were at or some of the states like California and New York have some have some work they did and then going to the papers they cited and I found kind of a lot of papers in like the 2010s and then they seem to like end at like 2016 ish um and like less recent stuff and so you know do we want to put a time damp on how far back we want to go within the past 10 years five years um I'm sure there's older stuff that's good but also where it's probably older stuff that has changed well I think there's so many studies out there on the sake from rubber or other components of artificial turf that I don't think we need to go back too far in time I think as we were saying I think the base point here is the credibility of the source and I think that you know the other aspect of this is do we want to include a study from say Washington state on salmon runs and the impact of from rubber runoff on those I mean yeah sure but is it as as pertinent something that was done in Rhode Island or Connecticut yeah yeah go ahead Marvin I was just going to say I think one thing to keep in mind is that um you know research takes a long time and the actual work that's done the actual you know sample and data collection or whatever um you know can take up to you know a year to analyze and you know then time to write papers um I know that the papers on which I was a co-author took you know three and a half years after the the actual work was done um you know before they were sent out for peer review so in in terms of timing I don't think I worry a whole lot about you know when something was done I think there were also funding cycles to keep in mind and that has a lot to do with when things you know are produced um you know somebody decides for a lot of money at a topic um there's a lot of research and there's a bunch of papers and you know depending on you know who decides to provide funding um you know you may not see you know a whole lot of work you know in a certain time period um to Mike's point about the salmon um you know I'm certain one more I think fish or fish so I think that you know we we look at impacts on fish and I'm not sure that the kind of fish is necessarily um critical no I just bring that up that's exactly right I just brought that up as another option to consider is the geography and the location of where the studies were whether that's significant or not we'll have to look at the studies to figure out yep Mike you might that's the one thing it's funny you say that I believe that particular toxin is only affecting salmon so when you are looking at that it might it might be impactful I don't think it's fish in general but that's just my little bit of knowledge maybe I'm maybe it's too little to be dangerous but um so we should look at how and why and all those factors no yeah and I would try not to restrict things to you know a particular species obviously for that very reason right um you know I guess so to the point Jill raised I mean I think you know context is always important right like maybe there's a really valuable study that's more than 10 years old right that's still essentially you know still still works right and maybe there's a study from three years ago that's already completely outdated um I mean I think you know a good rule of thumb would be that the older the study maybe the more you need to keep it in context um but the technology's changed I mean back to Leslie's point about you know astroturf being you know the coin you know that was the coin of the realm in terms of turf once upon a time but now nobody's really using it um I mean I as a lawyer I think you know sometimes a case that's 100 years old might still be the case that wins you win you your argument right but you know generally speaking the older the case you know the shakier your your legal foundation so um so it's all it's you know it's a sliding scale type thing and just a good point but keep it all in mind I guess right yeah and I mean to Leslie's point if you know if there's a lot of research on nylon fiber fields and they're not using nylon fiber anymore then it doesn't make a whole lot of sense to really put a lot of energy into that um you know so I think a lot of it's just going to be judgment call as we go yeah and and then I think we'll also all have the opportunity to talk about all of this kind of at the end um weigh in on this so you know I I like to think that we're all sort of you know open-minded and diligent so you know from that standpoint so um we're nearing six o'clock and I think we've sort of reached the end of the agenda although we're at new business so I'm certainly happy to take new new truly you know new topics new business um but do people generally feel comfortable with sort of the path at least for the next few weeks that we will take a two-week hiatus on these meetings we'll come back January 9th Tuesday January 9th at five o'clock via zoom um the idea would be that at any point of the next two weeks but I guess particularly the first week of January the that's when the subgroups would be reconnect although they can reconnect sooner but that would really be the week that they kind of maybe get down to brass tacks again on pursuing research avenues and having a good report out on January 9th and then that's kind of where we'd enter the month of January with a full head of steam I see um David has his hand up sorry to derail your transition Jim I wanted to step back just one second to touch and we talked about bias and studies and so forth and we were edging in this direction that I thought that was a really good one I want to take just a step further and just to think about methods in the study and in particular how generalizable the findings are because we may find something for example from Connecticut but it's only 15 people included in the study and it's got to do with health exposures whatever really not the most reliable in terms of reproducibility so that was something I wanted to throw into the mix in general thinking about methods is a good idea when comparing studies and I think we're all understanding about that but I thought it worth naming anyway so this is why I wish we could keep you around longer David thanks that's a really important point so with that new new business any anything people want to add maybe yours yeah I saw there was a comment in the chat and I just wanted to address so just to clarify for the general public and for everyone if there's any public comment that you want to be shared and I'm sorry for any confusion I do need to receive it Thursday by five o'clock prior to the Tuesday meeting so that I can get the packet together I'm not actually the one who posts it I have to go through another channel so I need to have the agenda everything pretty much ready to go by a certain time on Friday morning so that I can make sure it gets posted if we start running into a holiday and I have to think about this for a second I don't think there's going to be a holiday before our next meeting but that would mean that the agenda is going to have to be posted Thursday before so we'll address that piece but in the meantime for the next meeting any materials that were received this past week after 5 p.m. on Thursday so I did get some comments on Friday those comments will be included on the correspondence received for next week's meeting or I'm sorry the meeting in two weeks and generally it's going to be a five o'clock on Thursday cut off just so that I can try and maintain some sort of balance here with getting the information out in the right manner in the right timeline and I'm relying on other folks so just want to clarify that and if there's any change to that if we run into a holiday I'll make sure that we address that at that particular meeting and just to clarify it's actually three weeks from today we'll be meeting because we're taking the holiday week off and then we're having the first week of January for some group work any other thank you Natasha I appreciate the clarification for everyone any other thoughts you know last thoughts in 2023 with this group at least I just want to say I really enjoy working with all of you and I think that it's we're just a really great group that I feel like is going into this very open-minded and I just I appreciate all of you and I know that we're gonna come up with some really good work here so yeah I completely echo that you know I think we're off to a good stronger start which isn't always easy when you're starting these things up to get the path right so I really have great confidence in this group and like we'll come in after January it'll be a sprint but I think that this group will be able to do it so I'll see all of you in the new year I'm sure you know individually we'll be speaking you know in working groups between here and there but January 9th we will come back right in British Town so do we we just want to rely on the same folks from the last time who organized the sub-meeting so I'm happy to try and get the health division together I'm sorry health group together for another meeting maybe that week after the holiday the Christmas works I don't know about Joe or David but it works for me okay so we'll just follow that same format and reach out via email and then we're on the final agenda Jim we'll just need to go through the motion of yeah is there a motion to adjourn so moved well do I well I see a hand raised but it's not by somebody on the committee oh um okay so I think our policy has been yeah not to take yeah yeah so I would just invite that individual to either put something in the chat or feel free to to email and we can make sure that that gets put on here yes okay so with that is there a motion to adjourn so moved who seconded Jill sure I think it was Marvin oh Marvin multiple seconds okay we'll go through the roll Mike yes Leslie yes Jill Barr yep Natasha yes Jill yes Marvin yes Jim yes right happy holidays everyone happy holidays and the new year yeah 2024 we're going to have a big year so thanks everyone thanks thank you bye