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Deadly Poison in Your Yard

If you have a wooden deck or play set in your yard, and it was built before 2003, chances are your family is being exposed to arsenic.

Until 2003, pressure-treated wood – commonly used to build decks, playgrounds and picnic tables – contained a preservative called copper chromated arsenic (CCA). A typical deck or playhouse made with CCA-treated wood contains enough arsenic to kill the entire family, and sometimes the neighbors, too.

That doesn’t mean the arsenic in your deck or picnic table will kill you, of course. But kids who put their hands in their mouths after touching the wood are at risk of becoming ill, and people who burn or saw or sand the wood can suffer from arsenic poisoning from inhaling the dust and fumes.

Even if you don’t damage or destroy the wood, the arsenic will leach out of these structures for years, entering the soil and groundwater around your home. Any structures built with CCA-treated wood should be painted every six months, replaced or disposed of in properly lined landfills to prevent contamination.

If you’re not sure whether your wood is treated with CCA, one way to tell is to look at the color of the wood after it rains. When CCA seeps out of wood, it leaves a pale green deposit on the surface. The green color derives from the copper, but the leaching material actually contains a higher amount of arsenic.

The symptoms of arsenic poisoning often go undetected, though long-term exposure can cause serious health problems, such as cancer. In the short-term, arsenic poisoning can cause vomiting and dizziness and skin that’s exposed may become irritated.

The good news is that the Environmental Protection Agency reached an agreement with the lumber industry to stop shipments of CCA-treated lumber to retailers as of Dec. 31, 2003. Alternative products now exist to preserve wood and protect it from insects and microbial organisms. One new product, known as TimberSil, infuses wood with amorphous glass to make it unattractive to bugs as a food or water source.

To learn more about this story, download the pdf.

To obtain a kit to test for arsenic, click here.

To learn more about arsenic and pressure-treated wood, click here.

To read more about this and other environmental health issues, go to: www.environmentalhealthnews.org, www.ourstolenfuture.org, or www.healthandenvironment.org