This is a story which has been bubbling around now for quite a while - the health fears raised over the use of rubber crumb infill in 3G artificial sports pitches.

The latest twist in the story has been the reaction in Holland following a TV documentary on the subject. Amsterdam-based club Ajax has announced that they are to replace four artificial turf pitches which use the rubber granules, that their youth teams play on, because of safety concerns.

The documentary featured Professor Martin van den Berg, a toxicology specialist at Utrecht university, who told the programme that the artificial grass should not be used until potential risks are clear.

He was filmed in the programme saying, “As a toxicologist, I say: I wouldn’t play on these fields because we cannot make a proper assessment of the risks."

Health minister Edith Schippers has since asked the public health institute RIVM to report on the show's accusations - the most serious of which is that the rubber crumbs used are carcinogenic.

"Our youth players spend much more time on artificial turf than amateur teams," an Ajax spokesman told the Dutch news outlet, NRC. "And we also feel that we have a duty of care towards the parents."

The pitches at the club’s De Toekomst training centre will apparently be switched as soon as Ajax has decided what form of artificial turf to replace it with. As well as this, it's also been reported that around 30 amateur clubs in Holland have closed their doors as a result of the broadcast.

The Sunday Telegraph yesterday followed up the reaction in Holland with an excellent article which quoted Nigel Maguire a former NHS trust chief executive, whose son Lewis, 18, had the white blood cell cancer Hodgkin’s lymphoma and is in remission for the second time after a relapse.

Lewis was a goalkeeper, who played on 3G at the academies at Darlington and Leeds United. Nigel had some incredibly strong words for the use of rubber crumb in 3G. He is quoted in the article as saying the boom in 3G rubber crumb pitches is an “industrial scale experiment on the health of our children”.

As the Telegraph points out, artificial pitches are about to become even more prevalent in this country with the FA's expansive plans for the building of 3G football hubs across the country. The FA are clear though that the rubber crumb used in pitches over here does meet the European Union standards previously ignored in Holland. There was talk on the Dutch documentary that the rubber crumb had come from recycled pipes which had previously been used in the petrochemical industry.

The Sunday Telegraph had received a statement from Sport England that said that “numerous scientific studies” had passed rubber crumb as safe. The statement continued, “We will continue to work with [Defra] to remain at the forefront of research and therefore ensure the safety and well-being of people who use 3G pitches.”

Also a very interesting statement came out of FIFA this past Friday. With all this money being spent and put aside for future development of artificial surfaces, it seems quite significant that new FIFA president Gianni Infantino said he would rather the $4 billion set aside for football development over the next 10 years to be spent on natural surfaces.

I don't think he'd hear much argument to that policy from this industry.