Sacramento Head Start Alumni Association

Arsenic in the Picnic Table

Sep 18, 2002

A nationwide survey by the Environmental Working Group finds that the amount of arsenic leaching onto treated-wood surfaces in picnic tables, decks, and playgrounds does not decline with the age of the wood. Last February the Environmental Protection Agency required the pesticide industry to phase out the use of the arsenic-based pesticide chromated copper arsenate for use on wood that would expose children to the pesticide, but assured the public that old arsenic-treated structures did not need to be replaced. This report warns that ?“this assurance, it turns out, is wrong.?”
http://www.ewg.org