Shouldn’t there be a warning on certain types of wood from the lumber yard?
I used to have free access to the scrap pile of a truss plant and to me it was a gold mine. I salvaged major amounts of wood, pressure treated, with which I made things like tables, work benches, repaired some houses with, book cases and always had plenty for things like camp fires and BBQ’s.
The truss plant was busily pushing the massive pile of scrap into a small lake at the end of it’s property, which annoyed the local neighbors to no end. Their property also bordered the lake and tons of wood pushed in there had stopped up the outlet which caused flooding in rainy months. Since this was a poor neighborhood of minorities and the truss plant owner was white and well politically connected, complaints fell on deaf ears.
Eventually, the place folded, leaving 10 years of truss wood rotting in the lake.
I walked into a supply store to buy wood to make book shelves with and, being thrifty, purchased planks of a heavy, green colored pressure treated wood that felt wet but was real cheap. I made my book shelves. The scrap, weeks later, I burned in my BBQ grill along with chunks of Oak branches to cook on.
Now I discover that the pressure treated wood is injected with poisonous chemicals to preserve it!! Especially the green hued type, which apparently has arsenic infused in the stuff!
Now, I’m not one who works with wood a lot. Nor am I one to go out and buy $6 planks of pine when I can get them for free, recalling when 2X4s were $1 each and straight! So, I don’t spend all of my time in a lumber supply store.
Still, I’ve never spotted a warning on any form of wood telling one that the stuff can be hazardous to one’s health.
Do all types of pressure treated wood have poisons in them?
I mean, even bags of cheap charcoal warn you not to put the ashes down as fertilizer around any vegetable or fruit plants. (Gosh knows what goes into the stuff to generate all of those heavy metal remains.)
The truss plant wood was normal in color but hard and heavy. The other wood was dirty green, heavy, hard and took months to get rid of the wet feel.
Now, if the truss wood is full of poisons, what might that huge soggy mass be doing to the water in that small lake, the ground water and what run off there is when it floods? Should I contact the EPA? Is it poisoning slowly those people living around it? Most are using ground wells for drinking water.