News Coverage
Report Cites Cancer Risk of Treated-Wood Playsets
Published February 7, 2003
Playing on arsenic-treated wooden playground equipment can slightly increase children's risk of getting lung or bladder cancer later in life, according to a staff report released on Friday by U.S. safety regulators.
Contact with equipment treated with an arsenic compound called chromated copper arsenate can increase the risk of the types of cancer by anywhere from two to 100 per million, a staff report from the Consumer Product Safety Commission concluded.
"It confirms what people outside the CPSC have suspected and some studies have shown -- that arsenic does leach from this wood and there's a risk associated with it for people who use it," said Paul Bogart, a spokesman for an environmentalist group called the Healthy Building Network, which has petitioned the commission to ban the sale of the arsenic-treated wood.
The increased risk is mostly due to arsenic residue that children get on their hands, then ingest because of hand-to-mouth contact, the commission staff concluded.
The amount of added risk varies depending on how much contact children have with the treated-wood equipment, the agency staff said.
"While exposure to arsenic from (other) sources could be much higher than the exposure from playgrounds for some children, exposure to arsenic from CCA-treated playgrounds could be a significant source of arsenic for other children on those days that include a playground visit," the agency's chairman, Hal Stratton, said in a statement.
IN USE FOR MORE THAN 70 YEARS
Chromated copper arsenate, or CCA, has been used to protect wood from leaching and erosion for more than 70 years. Pressure-treated wood, as it is commonly known, is most often used outdoors in decks and playgrounds.Companies that have made or sold wood treated with the arsenic compound are becoming targets of a growing wave of litigation that is worrying investors.
A representative of the industry's chief trade group, the American Wood Preservers Institute, was not immediately available for comment.
The industry has long contended that the amount of arsenic that people absorb from CCA-treated wood is small compared to the amount they're exposed to naturally in the environment.
The CPSC staff are scheduled to brief the agency's commissioners in March on the petition to ban the CCA-treated wood.
In their report on Friday, the agency's staff recommended that parents wash children's hands with soap and water immediately after playing on CCA pressure-treated wood playground equipment, and that children not eat while on CCA-treated wood playground equipment.
Manufacturers of the treated wood are negotiating an agreement with the Environmental Protection Agency that will phase out the production of nearly all arsenic-treated wood for consumer uses by the end of the year.
The EPA is also conducting a study on the risks connected to arsenic-treated wood. Results from that study are expected to be released later this year.
The agency's staff recommended that the agency defer until that agreement is finalized.
The EPA and the commission are also studying what, if any, sealants can be applied to arsenic-treated wood to make it safer.
Environmentalists said the CPSC's conclusion will give momentum to the lawsuits being filed against the industry and raises serious questions about the thousands of play-sets and other CCA-treated wood products already in use.
But they were disappointed the commission staff did not recommend immediate action.
"The science has clearly come down on our side and made very clear that this is a high-risk ... set of products," said Ken Cook, president of the Environmental Working Group, another organization that petitioned the agency. "Now we have to take faster action."