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CCA-trreated wood is making headlines <br />as a potential danger for those who use it, <br />but what about parks and playgrounds? <br /> <br /> ' <br /> <br />COURTESY OF ARCH WOO0 PROTECTION <br /> <br />.~rom Mississippi comes : most <br /> unusual story of arsenic poison- <br /> ing. A man was put under inves- <br />tigation for murder after his wile was <br />found to have arsenic levels more than <br />100 times above normal, according to <br />a report in the Gainesville Sun. <br /> The alleged culprit? Arsenic-treated <br />wood, known in the trade as CCA-treat- <br />ed wood. <br /> Wood treated with CCA (chromat- <br />ed copper arsenate) has been in the <br />building trades for a long time. Huck <br />DeVenzio, manager o[ marketing com- <br />munications for Arch Wood Protection, <br />a manufacturer of wood presep/atives <br />based in Atlanta, says the method was <br />invented in 1933 and has been used <br />extensively Lot decks and backyard play- <br />equipment since the '70s. <br /> Treated wood protects against ter- <br />mites and rot, and has been most popu- <br />lar in areas susceptible to these twin ter- <br />rors, like the Southeast and Hawaii. <br /> <br />Regulators & Recommendations <br /> Rc'entt); CCA-treated wood has <br />come under [ire, as stories like the one <br />from Mississippi begir~ to come out of <br />the woodwork. But this is probably the <br />most sensational and unusual case yet, <br />and there's good reason for that. <br /> "The primary route of exposure is <br />making sawdust and either ingesting or <br />inhaling it," says Debra Kovacs, pesti- <br />cides team leader, region 8, for the <br />Emdronmental Protection Agency (EPA) <br />in Denver. "The folks in the article did <br />that and burned it in their fireplace." <br /> Great care must be taken when <br />working with treated wood - wearing <br />gloves, a mask and goggles, along with <br />containing sawdust and not burning it <br />as a disposal method. Besides burning, <br />these same precautions should be taken <br />with any type of building material, says <br />DeVenzio. <br /> "Don't burn treated wood scraps. <br />When yon burn, it burns the wood, but <br />thc three ~netatlic elements don't get <br />burned, so the concentration in the ash <br />is higher," adds DeVenzio. "You pretty <br />much have to ingest it; just touching <br />treated v,,ood doesn't cause any harm." <br /> The possibility of receiving <br /> <br />~ PARI{S&nEC 5USI'N~SS I Augusl ~00';' I www. p~rkfi~ndmcbusines~.com I <br /> <br /> <br />