News Coverage
Pressure for Safety
Parents Shop for Arsenic-Free Playgrounds
Published January 24, 2004
When Yanna Lambrinidou chooses which public playground to visit with her 2-year-old daughter, she considers not only the playground's location and its social scene, but also what its equipment is made of.
She avoids playgrounds with pressure-treated wood, which contains a preservative made with arsenic. "I know that there's naturally occurring arsenic in the environment and I can't control that," she said. "But when I can control it, I'd like to do so."
Lambrinidou, of the District, recently founded the group Parents for Nontoxic Alternatives. She frequents parks such as Candy Cane City in Chevy Chase, where the play equipment is metal and plastic, and the wooden railroad ties are buried deep enough that children are not likely to touch them.
Relatively few parents of young children boycott playgrounds that contain play structures made from pressure-treated wood, also called chromated copper arsenate (CCA) treated wood or arsenic-treated wood. But like Lambrinidou, some have become concerned about whether their children are exposed to arsenic, a carcinogen, while they play in older playgrounds at schools and in public parks.
The Environmental Protection Agency in November released a draft risk assessment indicating that children who play on arsenic-treated wood have a higher risk of developing lung or bladder cancer during their lifetime than the agency had previously indicated. A more definitive assessment of the cancer risk is scheduled for release this winter in a report by the EPA's Scientific Advisory Panel.
The wood industry has already agreed to stop manufacturing CCA-treated wood for consumer use, but there is no federal government requirement for anyone to remove existing CCA-treated wood playground equipment. According to the EPA, 14 percent of U.S. playgrounds have CCA-treated wood structures.
There are still treated-wood play structures in the Washington area, but they are becoming less common in public parks and public school playgrounds. Fairfax County and Prince William County public schools have none. Nor do any of Arlington County's public playgrounds or those in the town of Leesburg.
"I've been here seven years and have never seen a wood play structure in our parks," said Robert Capper, a landscape architect for Arlington County Department of Parks, Recreation and Community Resources. In Howard County's public playgrounds, any remaining wood play structures are constructed from cedar, not pressure-treated wood, so they don't contain arsenic, said John Byrd, chief of the Bureau of Parks and Program Services in Howard County's Department of Recreation and Parks.
In places that still have a few CCA-treated wood structures in public parks -- including Montgomery County, Prince George's County and the District -- there's a similar trend: The wood is on its way out and new play structures are made of metal for rails, poles and climbing devices, and plastic for slides and play panels.
Lynn Witt, a play equipment safety specialist for Maryland-National Capital Park and Planning Commission in Montgomery County, said that in the past 10 years, "we made a point on our own to replace it."
One of the county's flagship playgrounds, at Cabin John Regional Park, is scheduled this winter to get non-wood equipment, Witt said.
In the District, only about five city-run playgrounds have CCA-treated wood structures. Russell Cramer, risk manager in the D.C. Department of Parks and Recreation, said that since last year, written standards and guidelines specify that CCA-treated wood not be used in any new District playground.
"Irrespective of what the EPA says about it, we are not using it," he said.
In Prince George's County, Park and Planning Commission landscape architectural supervisor Larry Hill said that "it is a priority for us to take out anything still containing wood" in play structures.
Across the region, the main motivation for removing and replacing pressure-treated wood has not been the health concern. Playground experts said the wood requires continual maintenance. "It constantly needs to be tinkered with and tightened; it needs to be sanded if the wood cracks and warps with age as it dries out; it's a lot of work," said Elizabeth Cronauer, project manager for Fairfax County's Park Authority, which oversees about 150 parks.
Children like the wood playgrounds, and parents consider them more aesthetically pleasing than metal or plastic equipment, but "they are just headaches," Cramer said.
The gradual disappearance of CCA-treated wood in public playgrounds is good news to Emma Fletcher of Falls Church. Fletcher takes her 3-year-old daughter to a private preschool in Fairfax County at 10 a.m. instead of 9:10 to avoid having her play on the school's pressure-treated wood playground. To ensure that her daughter gets enough outdoor play, Fletcher takes her to playgrounds that have no such wooden structures. "The whole purpose of playgrounds is physical fitness and when a child is getting poisoned by a playground it's not worth it," she said.
Many preschools still have playgrounds with mostly pressure-treated-wood equipment because it costs so much to replace it. At Fletcher's daughter's preschool, the wood equipment was installed in 1999, so financially "it's going to hurt to have to replace it," said Fletcher, who is on a committee seeking grants for a new playground.
At the Clara Barton Center for Children in Cabin John Regional Park, all the playground equipment is pressure-treated wood except the slides. Director Chris Scanlon said replacement equipment would cost about $30,000, which far exceeds the $4,000 to $10,000 typically raised by the school for necessary equipment and supplies. There is no plan to replace the equipment unless new EPA findings more definitively link increased cancer risk to children who play regularly on pressure-treated wood, Scanlon said.
In one respect, Montgomery County Public Schools are following a tactic similar to Clara Barton preschool. Richard Hawes, director of facilities management for the county's schools, said 15 to 20 percent of the county's school playgrounds still contain pressure-treated wood. The county budgets $75,000 a year for equipment replacement, which buys two or three new pieces, although schools that are modernized receive all-new equipment.
"We are about 10 years away from replacing all the remaining pressure-treated wood in our playgrounds," Hawes said. Yet he said that schedule might be accelerated if the EPA's Scientific Advisory Panel report this year says there is a significant risk to children.
Ben Gitterman, associate professor of pediatrics and public health at Children's National Medical Center and George Washington University, says there is no need to rush out and have children's arsenic levels tested. "I don't think it's at the risk level of lead exposure," he said. Yet the risk from arsenic is real enough to require hand washing after coming in from outdoor play, he advised.
Environmental experts recommend sealing CCA-treated wood about every six months to reduce the amount of arsenic that leaches out onto human skin. Jane Houlihan, vice president for research at the District-based Environmental Working Group, which has advocated against CCA-treated wood: "No amount of arsenic is known to be safe, but sealing regularly is a decent compromise, an intermediate step."
Houlihan also recommended selectively replacing wood in things such as handrails and decking, in high-traffic areas where kids sit and play.
Paul Bogart, spokesman for the District-based Healthy Building Network, another group that campaigned against CCA-treated wood, noted that no government agency has provided guidelines on sealants. "It's ludicrous that the Consumer Product Safety Commission and the EPA have stopped short of answering the question of what do you do if you've got this wood," he said.
That guidance will come from the commission next year, said Eric Criss, director of the agency's office of information and public affairs. Cross said the agency is testing a variety of sealants, paints and stains "to see if when properly applied they can reduce the amount of dislodgable arsenic."
In the meantime, the agency said people should be careful with CCA-treated wood, especially to avoid hand-to-mouth contact with it. Criss said. However, he said, "we have not told anybody to go and take your playground off your public or school property."
Some parents, such as Chevy Chase resident Karen Hoffman, have no intention of keeping their children away from play areas that have pressure-treated wood. Hoffman said her daughter is old enough that she does not crawl on the equipment and her hands barely touch it, so her risk is less than a younger child who puts her hands in her mouth often. Also, while Hoffman said she does not want to be flippant about the issue, she is frustrated that children's play options are limited by so many potential hazards.
"There are no swings at Montgomery County Public Schools, no seesaws at Norwood Park. Everything is dangerous, so what can you do?" she said.
For Lambrinidou, the answer is clear: Select playgrounds carefully. As she looks for a preschool for her daughter to attend in the fall, she knows one thing for sure: "We are not open to a school that has pressure-treated wood playground equipment," she said.