An independent report by an American scientist which helped have CCA-treated timber banned in the US is now being circulated in New Zealand.
The research by Dr Rick Maas, head of the University of North Carolina’s Environmental Quality Institute, brands the use of arsenic-treated timber as a “national health priority” that can increase the risk of cancer.
The report, which looked at the ingestion of arsenic through contact with CCA timber, was presented to the Environment Protection Agency in the US in February resulting in a ban on arsenic treated timber and a two-year phase out of the product just two days later.
New Zealand’s Health Ministry has now forwarded a copy of the report to the Environmental Risk Management Authority and the Building Industry Authority. At present New Zealand manufactures about one million m3 of CCA timber a year and there are no regulations covering labelling of the wood or point-of-sale material.
