News Coverage
Area playgrounds fail test for arsenic
Published July 10, 2004
Elevated levels of a known carcinogen are lurking in the soil of playgrounds across Northwest Indiana, new tests show.
Public playgrounds where children innocently pass away their childhoods could be harboring a danger few have considered - arsenic.
While new bans work to phase out future use of tainted wood, no state or federal standards give guidance on how much arsenic is too much in existing playgrounds.
Seventy-one-year-old grandfather David Milosevich worries about the hundreds of playsets, backyard decks and fences he has constructed over the years as a carpenter.
"I feel bad that young kids today have been playing on this," Milosevich said.
For decades, Milosevich worked with arsenic day after day without giving it a second thought.
In the 1960s and 1970s, the warnings were there to use gloves and masks when working with the tainted wood, but they largely went unheeded by the building industry, Milosevich says.
"I don't know any carpenter who wore a face mask or took their coveralls home every night and washed them separately," Milosevich said.
The dangers of arsenic are the reasons he stood up at a Chesterton park board meeting and raised the issue that arsenic may be present at one of the community's most popular playgrounds.
Milosevich's hunch proved true.
Soil and wood samples taken by the Post-Tribune found arsenic at four wooden playgrounds tested in Northwest Indiana. Three of them were community projects constructed by volunteers.
The samples were analyzed for traces of arsenic by Severn Trent Laboratories in Valparaiso.
All four playgrounds showed minute results for arsenic when the playground equipment itself was tested, an indication that each community was regularly sealing the equipment - a move that could minimize arsenic from leaching out of the wood.
But the contents of the soil at each site drew mixed opinions from analysts.
Tony Havics, an environmental engineer in Indianapolis, said every soil sample the Post-Tribune collected came up high for arsenic.
Havics is a national environmental consultant who has crisscrossed the country working with municipalities regarding arsenic in playgrounds.
Havics cites the only guideline Indiana has that might be applied to playgrounds: 3.9 milligrams per kilograms in the soil.
It's a number used for residences, not typically playgrounds. But anything above 3.9 milligrams per kilograms of arsenic, Havics says, is cause for concern.
"It's safe at 3.9, anything above that has to be remediated," Havics said.
Playgrounds tested ranged from 22.4 milligrams per kilogram in the soil at Valplayso to 257 milligrams per kilogram in the soil at Pruzin Park in Merrillville.
IDEM maintains it doesn't have any standards specific enough to be used for playgrounds.
But using the state's residential standard, Pruzin Park in Merrillville showed arsenic at more than 65 times the accepted level in the soil.
"Whoa, that's up there," Havics said. "That's up there."
Havics estimated that a 40-pound child would have to ingest roughly 2.5 ounces of soil, "a fairly small amount," to get a potentially lethal dose of arsenic.
"I've got data on 15 playgrounds and the concentrations don't go that high," Havics said.
Duneland Friendship Park showed arsenic levels at more than 14 times the accepted residential level, while playground equipment at Marquette Park in Gary and Valplayso in Valparaiso were respectively at more than six times and five times the recommended level for arsenic.
Yet, Bruce Palin, deputy assistant commissioner for IDEM's office of land quality, didn't seem alarmed at the amount of arsenic the Post-Tribune found at the four playgrounds.
"Typically, someone isn't going to spend eight hours a day with contact with the soil for their entire life," Palin said.
Anyone dealing with a playground and arsenic should look at the land's history, Havics said.
Not all the arsenic present may be seeping from the wood.
"You'd want to look at the background of the site in case they used an old herbicide, because old herbicides are arsenic-based," Havics said.
Havics said the only way to deal with arsenic-tainted soil is to cap it by putting a clean layer of fill material over it, or to scoop out the soil and replace it.
Parks look at problem
While concern exists about arsenic, local park administrators have little guidance on how to deal with the issue.
The more arsenic is talked about, however, the greater the push among park systems to install metal or plastic playground equipment.
Pruzin Park in Merrillville has the oldest playground equipment due to be replaced when finances allow, said Terri Weems, Merrillville's park director.
"That playground would have been redone, but our tax situation isn't there," Weems said.
Until the Post-Tribune's samples were taken, no tests for arsenic had been performed.
Upon hearing the results, Weems said she had already contacted a certified playground inspector to take a look at the playground.
"Pruzin is one of our older parks and I knew that it would be at the top of my list as far as getting that wood out of here," Weems said.
Lalosa Burns, spokeswoman for Gary, said Marquette Park's equipment is regularly sealed.
"In regard to the equipment, we've always been concerned about what the wood contains," she said. "We've actually treated the equipment in Marquette Park ever since it was installed."
The soil around the Marquette Park equipment had never been tested before.
Burns points out that there aren't any requirements for soil testing around playground equipment.
"We are working according to guidelines that are currently in place," Burns said. "I'm not finding any requirement to test the soil.
That doesn't mean the soil won't be tested in the future.
"(This) is something we have a great interest in and we'd probably look more into it," Burns said.
Steve Doniger, director for Valparaiso Parks Department, said Valplayso was a community project built 10 years ago.
"I obviously want a safe quality environment for all our kids," Doniger said.
Doniger said he wonders about national standards on arsenic and where Valplayso fits in.
"If we're lower than the other three (parks tested), that's nice," Doniger said. "If there's a national standard, I'd like to know where we rank in that."
Bruce Mathias, Chesterton's park director, said he also was working on the issue. Since Milosevich brought up concerns about arsenic, Mathias has been working to arrange similar tests like the ones the Post-Tribune conducted.
The equipment at the popular Duneland Friendship Park was erected seven years ago by volunteers. Before that, it had a couple swings and a slide, Mathias said.
"It was not used to its full extent," he said.
Milosevich sent off for a home testing kit through an environmental advocacy group.
He, too, tested the soil and the equipment at a different area of Duneland Friendship Park.
His soil sample yielded still higher results than the Post-Tribune test. His test showed 90.1 milligrams per kilogram.
Milosevich said he plans to present his results at the town's park board meeting next month.
Every warm spring or summer day, any number of children can be seen putting the park district's only wooden playground equipment through its paces.
"Anytime, you have that presence (of arsenic), you have to have concern," Mathias said. "We're going to definitely test."
But in the scheme of things, Mathias wasn't certain where Duneland Friendship stood with its arsenic results.
"I don't know how bad 56 is," he said. "Someone has to come up with some standards."
The state lacks standards
While most state and federal officials admit that arsenic shouldn't be taken lightly, there are few standards in place to judge how much arsenic is too much.
The Indiana Department of Environmental Management is used to dealing with contaminated industrial sites, not contaminated playgrounds.
The state has standards for industrial contamination, residential contamination, contamination of water or soil, but no standards specific to areas where children might play.
Each site is different and requires a different set of calculations in order to consider the risks of exposure, said IDEM's Palin.
he level of risk for a construction worker is different than for that of a homeowner or child, Palin said.
"Our focus is primarily on industrial locations and sites that have been identified contaminated sites," Palin said. "There isn't documentation to the extent the playground equipment is used."
The state board of health hasn't documented any injuries from contact with treated wood, Palin said.
"But on the other hand, the steps the EPA is taking to phase out (treated wood) is a good thing to do," Palin said. "Why wait until it is documented to do something about it."
The Environmental Protection Agency is studying the issue of arsenic and treated wood.
"We are still evaluating a lot of exposure scenarios," said David Deegan spokesman for the EPA.
We have still not completed our work," he said.
Among the issues the federal agency studies is how best to dispose of the toxic wood and the best use of sealants to lock the harmful chemicals inside.
The EPA has standards for the amount of arsenic allowable in drinking water,but those aren't applicable for treated wood where children could potentially ingest the arsenic from putting their hands in their mouths after touching the wood or the soil, Deegan said.
"If it was that simple, frankly the EPA's work would have been done some time ago," Deegan said.
State, feds slow to act?
Tom Neltner, a chemical engineer and former assistant commissioner for IDEM,says the government has been slow to recognize the potential danger in treated wood.
"It's like the giant bear in the corner," Neltner said. "if you don't acknowledge it, it won't hurt you."
"They don't know how to deal with this issue," Neltner said of IDEM. "If they had to acknowledge playgrounds, think about how many playgrounds (there are). They're not geared up to deal with this type of problem - it's so widespread."
And few members of the public realize the implications of arsenic and treated wood, Neltner said.
"You don't want to intrude into people's homes, but a public playground?" Neltner said. "I think most people assume that a public playground is safe."
"They're generally unaware of the issue. Most of them believe the government would never let that happen,"
Neltner said. "What they don't realize is that treated lumber fell in a gap. There was an agreement to do some voluntary notification. And with nobody watching the businesses didn't do their part."
"People are assuming that the government's doing its job," Neltner said. "But the government dropped the ball."
So much talk about arsenic has erupted in recent years that in 2002 the timber industry imposed a voluntary ban on residential use of the material.
Only existing stockpiles of the green wood are sold now.
Manufacturers have come up with alternatives to the traditional arsenic-treated wood that is being sold in stores.
Treated wood still sold
Checks of lumber stocks at Menards and Von Tobel's in Valparaiso revealed no pressure-treated wood that was treated with arsenic.
A clerk at Menards said the company hadn't sold any arsenic-treated wood in a couple years.
Across the street at Home Depot, piles of the arsenic-treated wood were displayed. Each piece of timber was labeled with a warning sticker about exposure and large, dangling signs also discussed the dangers.
A clerk at Home Depot told a customer who inquired about the danger of arsenic that the chemical doesn't leach from the wood and that he doesn't use gloves, goggles or other safety equipment when cutting the chemically treated timber.
The Environmental Working Group, an environment advocacy group, took home improvement giants Home Depot and Lowe's to task for continuing to sell the wood.
"We estimate that one out of every 500 children who regularly play on swing sets and decks made from arsenic-treated wood, or one child in an average size elementary school, will develop lung or bladder cancer later in life as a result of these exposures," the report said.
School takes action
Concern about arsenic was enough to prompt Northview Elementary School in Valparaiso to replace its wooden playground equipment, according to Mary Sanders, co-chairwoman for the school's playground committee.
Sanders also sells playground equipment and she's a certified public playground inspector.
"It was old. There were sections that were being repaired on a fairly regular basis," Sanders said.
The equipment was between 12 and 15 years old. So the school's parent-teacher group raised money to replace it with galvanized steel and plastic equipment.
"I think (arsenic) should be a concern. The younger children who play on playgrounds inevitably put something in their mouths," Sanders said. "Given enough exposure, I think it could be harmful."