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The artificial turf used for home lawns or putting greens don't have it; sand/pulverized gravel is used to stand up the fake grass blades in that turf. But you can't play on that type of turf, it would be like playing on cement. Sports turfs fill the fake grass blades with rubber nibs. https://www.health.ny.gov/environmental/outdoors/synthetic_turf/crumb-rubber_infilled/fact_sheet.htm
Rubber nibs from recycled tires are way cheaper that virgin rubber, so that is why it's used. My son has been playing club soccer for 5 years now, and every artificial turf field he has played on has those nibs to cushion falls and make the fake grass blades stand up. Fortunately, he is a midfielder, so he doesn't get as much of it on him as goalkeepers, but it is always in his shoes and socks.
Pisses me off. They should make Sepp Blatter eat a plate of that shit. Fucker.
My son recently played a tournament in Barcelona, Spain, and some of the games were on artificial turf. I noticed that artificial turf fields there had these huge fire hose-type sprinklers on each corner that they turned on to wet down the field before the games. I am not sure if they do this to keep the nibs down or clean or cool (artificial turf gets way hotter than real grass) but I have never seen that done here in California for turf fields. None of the turf fields here have those sprinklers.
I know some schools are trying out less toxic nibs made by Nike from recycled sneakers ("Nike Grind"
, but it's very expensive--$40,000 more per field. http://www.nbcnews.com/news/investigations/high-school-changes-plans-artificial-turf-field-n232686 And it is still rubber, so whether it is truly nontoxic is unclear.
It makes way more sense to just plant real grass sports fields at this point, even in drought country like California.