EPA study says treated wood may pose cancer threat

By Eric Pianin
The Washington Post

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The study suggests the risk to children is considerably greater than EPA officials indicated last year in announcing the products were being taken off the market. While manufacturers have agreed to stop producing arsenic-treated wood products beginning in 2004, such wood remains in many public playgrounds and back yards.

The preliminary findings released yesterday show that 90 percent of children repeatedly exposed to arsenic-treated wood face a greater than 1 in 1 million risk of cancer, the EPA's threshold of concern about the effects of toxic chemicals.

The problem appears to be greater in the southern states, where children tend to spend more time playing outdoors. There, 10 percent of all children face a cancer risk 100 times higher than children in the general population, according to a review of the EPA data by the Environmental Working Group (EWG).

EPA officials cautioned that the findings are preliminary and subject to review next month by the agency's Scientific Advisory Panel.

"I think it's premature to speak with (any) degree of certainty," said Jim Jones, director of the EPA's office of pesticide programs, which ordered the study. "The preliminary assessment, I would say, shows there are marginal increases in risk to children who play on decks and play sets, but there's a lot of variables that go into the assessment."

But the draft's "probabilistic exposure assessment" contradicts the agency's assurances last year that existing arsenic-treated wood products did not pose a serious public risk.

In February 2002, the EPA and the chemical and home-improvement industries announced a two-year phaseout of the use of arsenic-based preservatives in pressure-treated wood widely used for fences, decks, playgrounds and boardwalks. Arsenic is a known carcinogen, and some experts suspect children who repeatedly come in contact with the preservative — known as chromated copper arsenate, or CCA — face a heightened risk of developing cancer of the lungs, bladder or skin.

While stressing that people should take precautions, then-EPA Administrator Christine Todd Whitman said, "EPA does not believe there is any reason to remove or replace CCA-treated structures, including decks or playground equipment."

"At that time, we didn't have a risk assessment," Jones said. "We had no reason to believe there was an increase in risk."

The EPA and the Consumer Product Safety Commission have initiated studies of wood sealants as a way to give consumers ways to protect their children from arsenic leaching from play sets and decks.

A nationwide survey conducted last year by the EWG and the University of North Carolina, Asheville, found that arsenic used to treat outdoor wood products doesn't dissipate with time and that children who play on decade-old equipment are as likely to be exposed to high levels of the agent as those who play on structures manufactured recently.

Jane Houlihan, EWG's vice president for research, said the EPA study "confirms that we need to protect children from arsenic-treated wood at playgrounds around the country."

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