Background: Laboratory leaching tests on treated wood were performed during a European robustness study in the framework of the validation of a tank leaching test procedure that has been proposed for construction products in order to determine the potential release of dangerous substances which can be transferred to soil and groundwater. The release of substances has to be determined also for m...

B uilding outdoor structures such as decks, docks, and playgrounds often signifies the pursuit of a more healthful lifestyle, but the wood used in much of this construction poses potential environmental and health problems when these structures are demolished. The chemicals that preserve the wood, primarily the inorganic waterborne preservative chro-mated copper arsenate (CCA), are designed to ...

Chromated copper arsenate (CCA) treated wood has been used extensively in outdoor applications, ranging from fence posts to decking and wood foundations. CCA treatment provides long-term protection for wood because chemical reactions that take place during treatment fix the preservative elements in the wood. However, varying amounts of CCA have been reported to leach from the wood (Lebow 1996)....

Accumulation of oxalic acid (OA) by brown-rot fungi and precipitation of copper oxalate crystals in wood decayed by copper-tolerant decay fungi has implicated OA in the mechanism of copper tolerance. Understanding the role of OA in copper tolerance is important due to an increasing reliance on copper-based wood preservatives. In this study, four copper-tolerant brown-rot fungi were evaluated fo...

In this research we experimented with a new and rapid way of analyzing wood. Near Infrared (NIR) spectroscopy together with multivariate analysis is becoming a widely used technique in the field of forest products especially for property determination and is already firmly established in the pulp and paper industry. This method is ideal for the chemical analysis of wood, and therefore preservat...

Five kinds of commercially available wood-based composites (softwood plywood, hardwood plywood, medium density fiberboard, oriented strand board, and particle board, hereinafter abbreviated as SWP, HWP, MDF, OSB, and PB, respectively) post-treated with alkaline copper quat (ACQ) and copper azole (CA) were exposed to decay and subterranean termite activity under protected above-ground conditions...

New alternative wood preservatives contain higher levels of copper (Cu) which can promote aquatic toxicity in natural water systems. Earlier work focused on evaluating toxicity using laboratory generated leaching solutions. In this study, the impact on preservative leaching and aquatic toxicity from treated wood products was evaluated using natural surface waters including waters from two river...