Another 4th scare:
Arsenic-laden decks

WASHINGTON – Responding to a national scare over arsenic that was sparked by bitter post-election demagoguery, Home Depot is advising customers to use goggles, gloves and dust masks when working with pressure-treated lumber, which contains arsenic.

The popular home-improvement chain is the largest retailer of pressure-treated lumber.

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About two months ago, it started posting red signs in the building-materials section of its huge do-it-yourself stores warning of the possible dangers of exposure to inorganic arsenic in the lumber – which is commonly used for backyard decks, fences and landscaping borders. It's also used for picnic tables and child play structures.

Pressure-treated lumber contains the preservative chromated copper arsenate, or CCA, which is forced into the wood using pressure and vacuum processes to help it resist rot and insects. (The copper gives the wood its familiar greenish hue.)

Americans have been using pressure-treated lumber for nearly 70 years. In fact, pressure-treated fence pickets, which are cheaper and longer-lasting than cedar pickets, now dominate the market.

But public perception about the safety of CCA-treated wood began to change last year when environmentalists and Democrats accused President Bush of wanting to increase the acceptable level of arsenic in drinking water. Media coverage triggered a national panic over arsenic.

Soon, CCA-treated wood was viewed as a threat to water sources since it can leach into soil – even though arsenic occurs naturally in soil and water, as well as food.

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The arsenic scare has sparked several personal-injury lawsuits over CCA, including at least one against Home Depot filed last month. Plaintiffs claim they were poisoned by arsenic in treated lumber.

Arsenic, used to poison rats, is toxic to humans if exposed at high levels for a long time. Symptoms include numbness in legs and arms, exhaustion, headaches and loss of balance, memory and coordination. Nausea and other flu-like symptoms also are common. Chromium is toxic, too.

The EPA says CCA is safe and has no plans to ban it, although it supports a voluntary wood-treatment industry move away from CCA.

Nonetheless, a Home Depot spokeswoman says the chain has pledged to stop selling pressure-treated wood by 2004.

Meantime, it's directing customers to a Canadian consumer safety website – http://www.ccasafetyinfo.ca – for tips on how to safely handle pressure-treated wood.

The site recommends that users:

• Wear gloves and long sleeves when handling treated wood.

• Wear masks and goggles when sawing and sanding it to avoid inhaling sawdust.

• Work outdoors.

• Wash hands after working with the wood.

• Wash clothes separately from other laundry.

• Dispose of scraps and sawdust after construction and don't store them or use as mulch.

• Never burn treated wood, which may release chromium and arsenic.

• Apply sealant on a regular basis to decks to lock in toxic chemicals.

• Avoid bleaching fence pickets with sodium hypochlorite and sodium hydroxide (main ingredients in Clorox), because they may release the toxic chemicals in treated wood.

A building-materials foreman at a Home Depot in Northern Virginia, where decks are popular, says the new warning signs over CCA-treated lumber stacks are "overkill."

He views the wood as perfectly safe and compares the arsenic scare to the scare over alar, the pesticide sprayed on apples.

"Basically, it's much ado over nothing," he said. "The media just doesn't have anything else to talk about in the slow summer months."

The foreman quipped that if CCA-treated lumber is a hazard, then large square footages of Home Depot stores, specifically the areas in and around the power-saw stations, are essentially "toxic waste sites."

He says the toxic trail would be long – extending from the lumber carts to customers' cars to their garages and sheds to their power saws and drills to their sanders to their clothes, and on and on.

"And get ready to rip out your fences and decks," he joked.

The foreman laments Home Depot "caved into media pressure" and is phasing out the popular product. Customers will end up paying more to build decks and fences, he warns.

The best-known alternative to CCA – called ACQ (amine copper quarternary) – costs about 20 percent more per stick. Cedar also is more expensive.

ACQ contains chemicals also found in swimming pool disinfectants and contact lens solutions.

It's not clear if such chemicals are on the blacklist of environmental worry-warts (hopefully not, for the sake of little summer splashers whose parents no longer let them sit at picnic tables or climb on wood jungle gyms).

But their worry over CCA-treated wood may have a consequence unforseen by environmentalists.

By protecting outdoor lumber against rot and termites, CCA extends the useful life of wood and thereby helps conserve forests.

Now that it will be phased out, decks and fences may need to be replaced more often – which is bad news for trees.