Fight Over Arsenic in Lumber Focuses on Public Awareness

Look out the window at the nearest wooden fence, deck, picnic table or playground set.

Chances are, it’s made from pressure-treated wood, the distinctive, pale green lumber that’s a familiar sight in home improvement stores nationwide. The green tint comes from a mixture of chemicals embedded in the wood to ward off termites, rot and fungus.

You’ve probably been exposed to this kind of wood many times without encountering any problems. But there’s no doubt that handling it, sawing it or burning it can make you or your family sick. That’s because one of the chemicals in the wood is arsenic--a poison and known carcinogen.

In all likelihood, you did not know this.

The reason is twofold: The wood-preservative industry, though well aware of potential hazards to those who work with the wood, hasn’t lived up to its commitment to inform customers of the risks. And the government hasn’t required that it do so, even though it was told more than six years ago that the word wasn’t getting out.

Rick Feutz had no idea he was putting himself at risk when he built a floating dock for his three children. For a week, as sawdust coated his body, Feutz became increasingly ill. Finally, he collapsed.

For months, Feutz, then a Seattle-area science teacher, needed assistance to get around; 15 years later, at age 53, he still suffers from weakness, partial facial paralysis, slurred speech and impaired thinking. His doctors’ diagnosis: arsenic poisoning.

“There may be a place for this stuff,” Feutz said. “But without the appropriate warnings, few homeowners are likely to treat it as a hazardous substance. This increases the likelihood that they may have exposures such as mine.”

3 Miami-Area Parks Affected

Industry officials deny that pressure-treated lumber poses a significant health risk.

Nevertheless, the safety of pressure-treated wood has become an issue in Florida, where arsenic levels that the state considers potentially harmful have been detected in the soil beneath children’s wooden play-scapes and other public structures.

Last month, officials closed parts of three Miami-Dade County parks after researchers for the University of Miami and the University of Florida found elevated arsenic levels in the soil there. The findings were from a study of soil under public decks and walkways in Miami, Tallahassee and Gainesville that turned up arsenic levels, on average, 35 times higher than the state’s stringent standard for residential areas. And, on March 13, Gov. Jeb Bush ordered a state-owned wood-treatment plant to stop using arsenic as a preservative.

“There’s a lot more arsenic coming out of this wood than anybody ever realized,” said Bill Hinkley, head of solid and hazardous waste for Florida’s Department of Environmental Protection. “Our concern is significant and growing.”

For 25 years or so, most lumber intended for outdoor use has been pressure-treated with chromated copper arsenate, or CCA, which extends its life for decades. The wood-preservative industry has boomed during that period; it now sells 6.5 billion board feet of lumber and brings in $4 billion annually.

Highly concentrated arsenic protects the lumber from termites. The arsenic and copper combat fungi. The chromium bonds the arsenic and copper to the wood.

Arsenic is a naturally occurring chemical element found at low levels in soil everywhere. But it can be fatal when ingested, and chronic exposure can lead to lung and skin cancer, as well as to nerve, organ and reproductive damage. Some scientists say health problems from long-term exposure may not show up for years.

Industry officials say the treated lumber is safe if handled properly. They say the vacuum and pressure process used to apply the pesticide fixes it deeply in the wood, preventing harmful amounts of arsenic from escaping.

Indeed, there are no more than a few dozen reported cases of serious health problems linked to the handling of CCA-treated wood by consumers. And there’s no evidence that anyone has become ill from exposure to arsenic that has seeped into the soil at playgrounds or elsewhere.

At the same time, it is impossible to determine the full extent of the problem. There is no agency that actively tracks and investigates injuries and illnesses associated with CCA exposure. And most people who work with the wood don’t know it contains arsenic; if they become sick, they may never suspect the cause.

“You can’t report what you don’t know,” said David McCrea, a Bloomington, Ind., attorney who has handled personal injury cases involving pressure-treated wood.

For the average homeowner, CCA does not appear to present a significant health hazard if precautions are taken when handling the wood. In addition, some experts recommend periodically sealing or painting pressure-treated decks or playground sets to reduce leaching. Some also recommend discouraging children from playing in soil or sand under elevated decks and making sure they wash well after playing on wooden equipment.

Some states and foreign nations have restricted use of CCA.

California prohibits using state funds to purchase CCA-treated playground equipment. Treated lumber in public playgrounds must be sealed upon installation and resealed every two years to prevent the arsenic from leaching.

Switzerland has banned CCA, and Japan severely limits its application. Vietnam and Indonesia prohibit the use of arsenic as a wood preservative.

In 1986, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency banned most arsenic-based pesticides. But it made an exception for CCA-treated wood after concluding that it did “not pose unreasonable risks to children or adults.”

Program Calls for Prominent Sign

The EPA initially decided to address handling and disposal concerns through a mandatory safety notice for all purchasers of CCA-treated wood. But, faced with industry opposition, it agreed to let the wood treaters voluntarily distribute, through retailers, an EPA-approved “consumer information sheet” at the time of purchase.

The EPA program called for a sign to be “prominently displayed in the sales area” of stores, alerting customers to the handouts that were to be made available at the sales counter, spelling out precautionary measures people should take. The wood-treatment companies had “primary responsibility for ensuring” that consumers got the literature.

To monitor the program’s effectiveness, the industry was required to conduct “a yearly survey of member compliance” and report the results to EPA.

Yet, by most accounts, not many customers carry this information home with their lumber.

Visits by The Times to five Home Depot stores and Lowe’s Home Improvement Warehouses in California, Texas and Virginia found that only one displayed a sign about the consumer information sheets and, when asked, only two stores had any printed information at all.

At a Lowe’s store in Manassas, Va., a salesman located a handful of brochures, after much effort, beneath a pile of wood. Notices at a Home Depot store in Monrovia told customers to request an information sheet, but none was available; a manager said they were on order.

In recent interviews, key representatives of the EPA and the wood-treatment industry acknowledged that the information is not getting to individuals who are buying the treated wood.

Scott Ramminger, president of the American Wood Preservers Institute, insisted that member companies are trying to educate consumers through his group’s Internet site and media campaigns, as well as through retail outlets.

But he said the industry has advised the EPA that the point-of-purchase program is ineffective. “We’ve told them it’s not working.”

Ramminger said the required annual survey repeatedly found that chemical companies and wood treaters were providing the consumer advisories to retailers, but the retailers frequently were not getting it to customers. He said the industry informed the EPA of these results at a Dec. 14, 1994, meeting, and of its intent to end the surveys and focus on increasing public awareness.

Connie Welch, who heads the EPA pesticide branch responsible for an ongoing reevaluation of CCA, said officials who attended the 1994 meeting confirmed that the industry “basically said . . . that they didn’t see where the program was working.”

Welch said oversight of the consumer awareness program has changed hands within the EPA at least twice since then. She could not explain why the agency had not prodded the wood-treatment industry to step up its buyer notification efforts.

Welch said the EPA now is “very concerned” that consumers are not receiving any guidance and that the agency is working with the wood preservers to improve the buyer notification program. EPA’s reassessment of CCA is expected to be completed in 2003.

Don Harrison, a Home Depot spokesman, said, “Our policy and practice is to make the information sheets available at the point of picking up the product.” He said the company has made them more prominent in Florida as a result of the recent controversy.

Chris Ahearn, a Lowe’s spokeswoman, said that its stores are supposed to make the sheets available but that employees don’t always do so. She said Lowe’s is taking steps to better educate employees about getting out the advisories.

Feutz said a consumer advisory might have made all the difference to him.

“Had I known, I could have made an enlightened decision whether I wanted to use that wood or not,” he said. “But, at the very least, I would have used the precautions.” He settled a lawsuit in 1992 against the CCA manufacturer, wood treater and lumber store where he bought the boards for a sum his attorney called “substantial.”

Mark Dorman said he too had no idea that treated lumber contained arsenic until he wound up injured from it, according to McCrea, his attorney.

A maintenance worker and part-time contractor in Bloomington, Dorman was building a deck in 1996 when multiple splinters lodged in his right shin after he walked into a board. He cleaned up his leg but, six days later, was hospitalized because it was stinging, swollen and discolored. A large splinter was then found still in his shin.

Dorman has since had multiple emergency room visits and hospitalizations, McCrea said. Dorman suffers from decreased mobility, and faces prolonged treatment, the attorney said. He has sued the CCA manufacturer, wood treater and retailer; they deny that the chemical caused his medical problems.

James Sipes, an employee at the Hoosier National Forest in Indiana, vomited large amounts of blood in 1983 and 1984 after sawing CCA-treated wood to make picnic tables. He retired in 1985 on total disability and later won a jury award of $100,000 from the chemical manufacturer and a settlement of $667,000 from other wood-related companies.

State Toxicologist Downplays Risks

Burning the wood creates toxic smoke and ash. A Wisconsin family reported muscle cramps, seizures and hair loss after repeatedly using CCA-treated scraps to fuel the family stove.

Critics contend the industry has not made the information more available because doing so would create demand for wood treated with alternatives to CCA.

Manufacturers of ACQ, a nontoxic wood preservative, say it is as effective as CCA, although slightly more expensive. But larger outlets do not carry it, and it can be difficult to find.

In Florida, the CCA controversy has been fanned by reports in the St. Petersburg Times and other media, university research findings and a lawsuit filed by a Miami-Dade County deck owner seeking class-action certification on behalf of those exposed to CCA-treated wood.

The Florida Health Department has sought to allay concerns.

“Children are not going to be exposed to enough arsenic for a long enough period of time to really increase their risk of cancer,” said Joe Sekerke, a state toxicologist. “For acute arsenic poisoning, the children would have to eat incredible amounts of soil.”

There is no national standard for acceptable arsenic levels in soil. State standards vary widely. Florida’s are among the toughest: maximum allowable levels of 0.8 parts per million in residential areas and 3.7 ppm in industrial areas. California’s are much less stringent: 22 ppm for residential areas, 480 ppm for industrial applications.

The industry says Florida’s numbers are so extreme that they fall below the average arsenic levels found naturally in soils nationwide.

While defending CCA as “a safe, effective product,” the wood institute’s Ramminger did not dispute estimates that 10% to 20% of the arsenic in a treated board will leach out over 25 years.

Hinkley and other experts say treated lumber poses a number of potential threats: Arsenic could seep into ground water from discarded wood placed in unlined landfills. It could leach from wood chipped into mulch (which is prohibited but hard to prevent) or toxic ash could be created by burning the lumber.

“We make decisions these days if we know a chemical is not a good thing. We try to minimize its use or its spreading in the environment,” said Timothy Townsend, an environmental engineer and an investigator with the University of Miami-University of Florida study. “Science tells us that just increasing the overall burden of arsenic is not a good thing.”

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Times staff researchers Sunny Kaplan in Washington and Lianne Hart in Houston contributed to this story.

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Handling CCA-Treated Wood

Environmental Protection Agency-Approved Precautions

* Do not use for cutting boards or countertops.

* Do not use where preservatives may become a component of food or animal feed.

* Use only wood that is clean and free of residue for patios, decks and walkways.

* Do not burn; dispose by ordinary trash collection or burial.

* Wear a dust mask and goggles when sawing or machining. If possible, perform these operations outdoors.

* Wear gloves to protect against splinters.

* Wash exposed skin after handling the wood.

* Launder clothing separately if sawdust or preservatives accumulate on them.

For more information:

Environmental Protection Agency: www.epa.gov/pesticides/citizens/1file.htm

Florida Center for Solid and Hazardous Waste Management: www.ccaresearch.org

American Wood Preservers Institute: www.preservedwood.com