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• Childhood Obesity
• Cancer
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• Wood Smoke
• Pressure Treated Wood
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• Plastics

Pressure-Treated Wood

Reports & Publications

Background & Links

EPA Consumer Safety Information Sheet: Pressure-Treated Wood

Chromated Copper Arsenate (CCA): Questions and Answers

Connecticut Agricultural Experiment
Station - studies on pressurized wood

Use and Disposal of Wood Pressure Treated with Chromated Copper Arsenate (CCA)

EHHI has worked to educate the public to the dangers of arsenic exposures from pressure-treated wood. Common sources of arsenic exposures to children are pressure-treated wood playscapes, sandboxes and picnic tables, as well as soil beneath decks constructed of pressure-treated wood.

Pressure-treated wood, which is widely used in the construction of children's play equipment, picnic tables and decks, contains arsenic and copper. The arsenic in pressure-treated wood leaches out and can cause arsenic exposures which are significant enough to increase one's cancer risk.

Children and adults become exposed to the arsenic in pressurized wood in a variety of ways: inhaling sawdust if it is sawed; breathing in smoke if it is burned; eating vegetables from a garden that is edged by pressure-treated wood; and by hand-to-mouth contact when touching the wood.

News from EHHI

Studies indicate Pressure-Treated Wood may impact human health

Environment and Human Health, Inc. warns public that pressure treated wood is a source of arsenic exposure