CCA News & Information Articles

LESSONS LEARNED FROM THE ARSENIC CRISIS Hi Everybody, Lessons being learned from the arsenic crisis in Bangladesh and India are proving essential information for the rest of the world as we tackle many arsenic issues. As you know I focus mainly on the cca wood issue but I have been reporting and learning about arsenic problems from other sources. Below is a comment from one of the authors of a report that was posted to a group that I am subscribed to. I have learned a great deal from these individuals who post there and who write me personally. The world is becoming an increasingly small community and if we pay attention and co-operate we have much to learn from each other. A link to the article is provided. These comments have major implications for the banning of the use of arsenic in the products that we use and in the dangers they also present to their disposal. Several days ago before the June 10th first anniversary of my stats program we passed the two million successful requests filled from the website. This interest in this subject is growing Take care everybody and please keep safe. Deborah A ROOM WITH A VIEW Let's get the story straight Is there a risk or not? Some things you are not being told by the Canadian government comments and Arsenic-Treated Wood Can No Longer Be Produced 12-30-2003 Hi Everybody, I would like to comment on this piece. We know that cca wood should not be used in aquatic conditions whether or not it has been banned. See for yourself the results to the environment http://www.usgs.gov/public/press/public_affairs/press_releases/pr1758m.html Read a letter from a victim. Dear Deborah, My name is xxxx. I am an avid boater and have been doing so for 25 years. I am 47 years old, 6'1" and weigh 180 and have been noticing that I have many painful cysts forming around my thighs, waist and rear end. I've had about 15 of the larger ones removed in the last 3 months. I'm otherwise in excellent health and never smoked or drank. I swim long distances weekly for exercise and can easily free dive to 60 feet while snorkeling. My doctor was wondering where the cysts came from and ordered a heavy metals test that included arsenic. The test came back positive for arsenic. I now think it came from a lifetime of walking weekends on CCA wood at the marinas and walking barefoot and sitting on docks near my boat. I am a white collar worker, real estate and insurance industry all life. My doctor now says that I may develop cancer from this and advises that I take out a life and disability insurance policy now. Is it possible that this is true and what can I do to get the arsenic out of my body? Has this happened to anyone else? Thanks for your time, I think we need to question any use of cca wood. Now for the new touted alternative, we know from studies by Judith Weis and others that copper leaches even more than cca does in aquatic environments and that is a great deal. Here is a link to an item on that. http://pubs.acs.org/subscribe/journals/esthag-w/2002/feb/policy/jp_wood.html Let us learn from our mistakes and not wait for someone to govern us to do the right and safe thing. Take everybody and please keep safe. Deborah christmas letter 2003 12-22-2003 Hi Everybody, I would like to tell you a heartwarming story. There is a grade four class in California who wanted to send out a message similar to the meaning of the “We are the World” song. The teacher searched the Internet for something for her class to perform. She came across the song “One Love One World” by Craymo on the new songs for peace website. She managed to get a hold of Craymo and drove 40 miles to his home to buy the CD which he generously gave her. He showed up at the children’s Christmas concert and taped the performance and saw the power of his art in action. This holiday season as we face a New Year we can be confident that people all over the world are reaching out to each other and discovering that we are really all the same. Today’s announcement that Australian government has found the safety of arsenic treated wood to be in question is the result of people around the world responding to their review. People in Bangladesh and India need help with the arsenic crisis. People in South Africa need help with the AIDS crisis. In Iraq and other countries the ravages of war have left many needs. Here at home in Canada our farmers, fisherman and others face crisis’s of there own. If we can remember that love is the only requirement to help one another we can accomplish much. Please remember others in your gift giving. So I invite you to listen to the song picked by the children in grade four from Abraham Lincoln Elementary School in California and as you hear the message remember our future is in good hands. Take care everybody and please keep safe. Deborah One Love, One World http://www.newsongsforpeace.org/songs-craymo1.html comments on Court Sides With Wood Treaters Against Victims of CCA 12-18-2003 Hi Everybody, Below is a news release from Beyond Pesticide which contains a link to a story on a court ruling on a cca wood burning case. When I read this piece I became quite angry. The fact that any court could make this statement is beyond belief. “Trying to hold the manufacturers accountable under the Indiana Products Liability Act (IPLA) proved equally unsuccessful. According to the state law, liability can only be held if injury or damage resulted from "reasonably expectable" use of the product. Even though wood ashes are known to be a rich source of nutrients for any soil, the court ruled that the use in question was not to construct and repair the deck but to dismantle and demolish the treated wood. Therefore, the court ruled that the burning of the wood was not a reasonably expectable use.” The burning of scrap wood goes on all over the world in incinerators. Carpenters burn scraps as in the famous Wisconsin case. My neighbor certainly altered the lives of my family and others by the burning of scrap wood. Recently I contacted the EPA because a man reported to me he was burning treated wood and would continue to because he did not believe it was dangerous. After educating him I told him that I would report him if he continued, he told me to go ahead the government would not care. I knew he was right but I reported him anyway. Here is the EPA’s response Good morning, Ms. Barrie, Thank you for informing me of this matter. Since Mr. xxxx has not contacted me directly posing any questions or concerns, and since the dialog has been between the two of you, I would suggest that you direct him to our wood preservatives Web site ( http://www.epa.gov/pesticides/factsheets/chemicals/1file.htm ) where we clearly state that CCA-treated lumber should not be burned. He should also check the Agency's Office of Solid Waste web site at http://www.epa.gov/osw/ for disposal information. I hope that this will prove helpful. If Mr. Smith wishes to write to us directly, he should feel free to do so. Thanks, and have a great week! I wonder if murders and thieves must first contact police before they are obligated to investigate? I received a letter from a plant engineer telling me they burned scrap wood that was treated and he had become ill. This wood was bought legally. Here ia quote. “the boiler operator swam in dust and smoke and fumes all day. We shoveled ash out by hand and 2-3 times a year entered the belly of the furnace and removed accumulated ash (you were literally submerged in it). The ash was moved by front end loader across the road and stored uncovered in a pile in the yard (50 feet from the street) and as I said the stack discharged over the local houses, we routinely got odor and smoke/soot complaints from the neighbours about ash on their cars/lawns. This was done with little attention to health or safety concerns (respirators/monitoring) and to my knowledge continues like this currently. About 3 months after I started there, the owner, xxxxxxx approached me because he received a report from the govt. informing him he could not dispose of his ash as he had in the past. When it was required to dispose of the ash, it was first tested at a lab, and if the analysis was OK it was taken to a municipal dump site. The problem was, for the first time, the lab analysis of the ash showed a large amount of arsenic (also I think, Chromium or Molybdenum) and now had to go to a special disposal site. His concern was where the arsenic had originated from? As it turned out, the scrap wood we bought from the recyclers had a large amount of pressure treated scrap wood in it and we figured (rightly, I guess) that this was the source of the arsenic. We were burning literally tons of this stuff a day. The only change was to dispose of the ash differently and we continued as before.¨ Obviously the government was aware. It is not only reasonable to assume that people burn wood, scrap wood, treated wood, it is unreasonable to think that if the governments and courts fail to act on complaints, then people will think that activists like myself are scaremongers and they will not protect themselves. It takes one tablespoon of cca ash to kill a 250 lb person. I sent this man to the press, the press was not interested in his story. This man was willing to risk his job because he had read a story about me in a paper and did not want that to happen to others. I admire him, a lot of good that will do him, the plant workers or that neighborhood. The letters that come to me from people who have neighbors burning cca continue. The two little girls in Manotick Station still are going unprotected from their neighbors who burn treated wood. I have done everything I know how to do. Once someone intervened but when the situation reoccurred the help vanished. The mother calls me and I hear her babies coughing and wheezing and I can hardly believe I live in a country where their government will not help them. The real question is, is it reasonable to expect governments and courts to do their job? Take care everybody and please keep safe. Deborah Court Sides With Wood Treaters Against Victims of CCA letter on cca wood burning and government response Hi Everybody, I received this information from Curtis Englot of Toxic Contamination with the Canadian Ministry of the Environment. Although I appreciate it and hope it is of help to some of you it is not what I meant when I said the government is not dealing with the burning of cca wood. If some one were to shoot at you, or some perform some other act that might endanger you or put your life at risk you would call the police and they would be charged. If someone were to vandalize your property, decrease it’s value and you knew who they were you would call the police and they would be arrested and your insurance would repair the damage. Yet a person can burn cca wood, contaminate your property and poison your body with toxic smoke and although the government states that this is not something that should be done, they will not assist you. There is no law in place to protect you. Your Health insurance won’t pay for your care and you will find yourself in a financial crisis on top of everything else. I have been told that I could spent the rest of my life getting treatment and never succeed in ridding my body of the enormous toxic load I carry. Since it is damaging my body it is agreed that lessening the load is extremely necessary. The M.O.E. told me they would investigate on a request from my local Health Unit in 2000. My local health unit will not answer my calls or my letters anymore. They had previously spoke to my neighbor and spoke to my family but that is all they did according to my knowledge. They have made it very clear that I am a nuisance not my neighbor. They do know the results of my poisoning but are not interested in how it came to be. My government allowed this product on the market, they acknowledge the danger ,they refused to protect me. We need laws on burning toxins, we need them enforced. I have received a lot of letters of support and offers of help. I will get them answered as soon as possible. Anyway here is the letter from Curtis and I believe if he were the person we could call when the wood was being burned, we would probably all be a lot better off. Take care everybody and please keep safe. Deborah letter on arsenic crisis 08-20-2003 Hi Everybody, I have had the pleasure of growing contact with those who work on the arsenic crisis in Bangladesh. If we are wise we will learn from them. Everyday there are more and more news items on arsenic contamination and when I am feeling a little better I will put together a list to show you what is happening all over that many people are not aware of. Joinal Abedin has been kind enough to share some of his knowledge of the consequences of arsenic on plant crops. With cca wood being used around garden beds and toxic sludge being placed on gardens and crops that contain arsenic we are heading for trouble. Waterways are becoming arsenic contaminated and in the States where the EPA has brought in new regulations of 10ppb instead of the old 50ppb some communities are rising up stating it is too costly. A look at Bangladesh should tell us that prevention is far less costly than treating the problems that we could face. Just as my family knows the cost when cca wood is burned and no one intervenes, so the people in Bangladesh know the cost of arsenic contaminated water. The EPA is moving to prevent a crisis with arsenic in water in the USA. Hopefully governments can be persuaded to further protect from arsenic in cca wood. My thanks to Joinal and all those who work to help those who are suffering. Take care everybody and please keep safe. Deborah plant emissions in canada 07-21-2003 advertising 07-19-2003 arsenic and offgassing 06-28-2003 Hi Everyone, We are continually told that arsenic in cca wood can not off gas because the amount of heat necessary to do this would only be accomplished through burning. What we are not told is that there are various chemical reactions including the one linked that can cause arsenic to change chemically into arsine. This is an extremely dangerous problem if the wood were to be inside your home or near a furnace air intake pipe etc. There have been several reports of people building cca saunas. That is terrifying. There is also a possibility that I have been reseaching on the suggestion of an activist in Ohio that perhaps chemicals not listed in cca are capable of carrying the metals, so that while cca in itself is not necessarily offgassing, the other chemicals give it the ability to move in air. Any ideas or help on this thought would be much appreciated. Take care and please keep safe. Deborah CMHC SPEAKS OUT ON MY CONCERNS WITH CCA WOOD 05-09-2003 CMHC SPEAKS OUT ON MY CONCERNS WITH CCA WOOD cca peg 03-08-2003 my concern about CCA PEG, your comments are welcome DATA GATHERING AND HISTORY LETTER TO LIST ON HEAVY METALS AND PERSONALITY CHANGES 09-23-2002 FINDINGS FROM TALKING TO VICTIMS AND MY OWN EXPERIENCE Comments on the the new Florida Health Risk Study 08-07-2002 A new study out of Florida states there is no concern from the leaching of cca wood on play ground equipment and the soil beneath. I offer my comments. LETTER A SAD DAY Letter to the Ottawa Citizen 07-08-2002 - http://www.canada.com/ottawa/ottawacitizen/archives/story.asp?id=EC9C0292-2587-49B8-8C7F-5163A3EF91E8 Urging Ottawa to Test all Structures of CCA Wood Phase-out of toxic wood hides regulators' failures Letter To Ottawa on Home Depots Decision To Drop Pressure Treated Wood Letter to The California Senate Committee victim impact statement to the committee in California Working on Legislation there to ban the purchase and making of cca wood in the State FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE February 16, 2002 Home Depot Drops Lumber Treated With Arsenic: Activist worried Canada acting too slow New home? Watch out for corrosion 11-13-2004