News Coverage
Arsenic-treated lumber lingers, despite ban
Published March 23, 2004
BLACKSBURG - Arsenic-treated wood, banned from production for residential use almost three months ago due to concerns about cancer risks for children, lingers in Blacksburg's Hand-in-Hand Park, where volunteers coat it each year with a sealant intended to keep chemicals from leaking from the playground's aging timbers.
The much-loved but deteriorating array of castle-like turrets and walkways, one of the New River Valley's most popular playgrounds, is just one place where chromated copper arsenate lumber, known as CCA, remains. For decades, the preservative-treated wood was a favorite material for outdoor decks, raised garden beds and docks.
"We will eventually phase that playground out," Blacksburg parks and recreation director Dean Crane said about Hand-in-Hand, which had a projected 15-year life-span when constructed 11 years ago. "But over a period of time. We're not going to bulldoze that thing."
Hand-in-Hand's CCA construction "has some risk compared to metal," Crane said. But with the wood sprayed with sealant, that risk is considered minor, he added.
Concerns about CCA have grown for about five years as studies suggested the arsenic used to prevent bugs from eating the wood could leach out and cause significant health threats to those who handled the lumber or played on or around it. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's most recent study determined that young children who play frequently on decks or playgrounds built with CCA wood had a 1-in-100,000 chance of developing bladder, lung or liver cancer.
That's a relatively small risk, EPA spokesman Dave Deegan said last month. But it was enough to prompt his agency to broker a Jan. 1 phase-out of the wood's production for residential use, though stores were permitted to sell their remaining stock and there were no requirements to discontinue building with already-produced lumber. At Hand-in-Hand, for instance, town crews continued to use CCA wood last month to shore up parts of the playground.
"There's not a one-size-fits-all answer to the question of how much chemical comes off the wood," Deegan said. "It's well-established that arsenic is a human carcinogen.
What's not well-established ... is well, are there any exposures to this wood that parents need to be concerned about?"
The wood industry has maintained that CCA wood is safe, though it carries warning labels.
Last month, Home Depot and Lowe's stores in Christiansburg began receiving wood treated with alkaline copper quaternary, or ACQ, one of several treatments considered safer than CCA. The stores now have little CCA wood left. Prices for ACQ wood run somewhat higher.
CCA wood is still produced for non-residential uses such as farm fences and salt water docks.
The EPA hopes to have preliminary results this year from a study of how well different sealants work in holding the arsenic in the wood. The agency recommends that children who play on CCA wood wash their hands before eating and that people working with the lumber wear protective gear. Exposure to sawdust from CCA also should be limited, Deegan said.
Jody Booze-Daniels, chairwoman of the Friends of Hand-in-Hand Park, recalled that, "We used to sand the wood before we put the sealer on it, but we stopped doing that years ago." This Saturday, weather permitting, the volunteer group will hold an annual repair session at the playground. The following weekend, the volunteers will once again coat the park with a linseed oil-based sealant.
Kevin Long, owner of Long's Elite Powerwash II, a Blacksburg company that seals, cleans and builds decks, reported an increasing number of calls in the past few years from people who wanted to better protect themselves from CCA wood. Long said he may soon stock a type of outdoor carpet that fits over deck boards, leaving gaps for drainage but preventing physical contact with the wood.
Sealing decks has become more popular, though Long advised sealing only the top of the wood. Coat both sides, and "it'll rot out twice as fast" because the sealant will trap moisture in the wood, he said.
The first deck Long built with the ACQ-treated wood was for Jan Notter, a Blacksburg resident who in 1999 was diagnosed with arsenic poisoning later traced to the hours she and her husband spent scrubbing their deck with bleach, a process they learned helped bring arsenic to the surface.
Notter, a nurse practitioner, said Monday that she had to quit her job with the health department because of nerve damage in her hands and feet. "It feels like hot coals, sometimes a hot knife," she said of the problems she still deals with.
Now working part-time with Montgomery County's school system, Notter said she's come to see arsenic as a danger that can have very different effects depending on a person's metabolism and the amount of exposure.
Not surprisingly, Notter said she'd become an advocate for taking precautions around CCA wood. "I'm making sure our church playground is being resealed," she said.
Staff researcher Belinda Harris contributed to this report.