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“The wood treatment industry and the EPA finally reached the common sense conclusion that the best way to protect kids from arsenic wood was not to affix a poison label to it, but to eliminate it,” said Paul Bogart of the Healthy Building Network.

Arsenic-treated wood is banned or strictly regulated in several nations in the world, including Japan, Germany, Australia, and others. Despite evidence that arsenic was leaching into groundwater and contaminating land, each year nearly 6.4 billion board feet of wood treated with a chromium-copper-arsenic (CCA) formula was created, fueling the growth of a $4 billion industry.

Years of effort to put more stringent restrictions on arsenic-treated wood in the United States had failed due to the Environmental Protection Agency’s policy to allow industries to largely police themselves. Even in the era of voluntary compliance and self-monitoring, the relationship between the wood treatment industry and the EPA stands out as particularly cozy. Historically, efforts to put more stringent restrictions on arsenic-treated wood in response to mounting scientific evidence of its dangers were thwarted by EPA’s exemption of treated wood from hazardous waste laws and a voluntary labeling program that both the agency and the wood treatment industry publicly acknowledged as a failure.

The Healthy Building Network’s campaign against arsenic-treated wood began by initiating a public dialogue about its toxicity, especially to children, and the availability of safer alternatives.  HBN, its allies in environmental and public health organizations publicized existing scientific research that found arsenic rubbed off playground equipment onto children’s hands and was absorbed and ingested when children put their hands into their mouths. HBN and others filed a petition with the Consumer Product Safety Board urging it to ban arsenic-treated wood from playgrounds on health and safety grounds.