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January 29, 2005
Corrosion by collusion?
If you're thinking of building a deck or repairing outdoor structures, bear in mind that the EPA has recently banned wood treated with chromated copper arsenate -- long the industry's standard -- in residential construction. Why? Apparently, the usual concern about children: The EPA conducted risk assessment, and evaluation of public comments and input from an external scientific review panel on methodologies to perform a risk assessment for residential settings and potential exposure to children from CCA.I'd love to know what "public comments" we're talking about here. In practice, "democracies" like ours allow small organized minorities to dictate terms to ordinary taxpayers, while making us all pay for their hordes of consultants and government-funded Ph.D. candidates. Large businesses -- and (of course) government -- may continue to use CCA: The use of CCA-treated wood will be limited to certain industrial and commercial applications. Residential applications affected by the change include play structures, decks, picnic tables, landscaping timbers, residential fencing, patios, and walkways/boardwalks. Some applications not affected by the settlement include highway construction, marine (saltwater) applications, utility poles, pilings, and selected engineered wood products.(No wonder they had no problem pushing this through, what with govermnment and big business exempt.) But if there's no reason to remove it from existing structures, why ban it? And why would anyone care? Because, as I just learned, CCA's replacement, (ACQ) wreaks havoc with construction materials: With environmental and health concerns growing over the use of arsenic, the wood-preservative industry surrendered the right to use arsenic in wood for residential uses at the beginning of 2004.This all makes prices go up, of course, and forces suppliers to order new, "improved" materials. Are environmentalists and big business working in collusion? And is the concern really about children eating arsenic-treated wood? What happens if they eat ammoniacal copper quat, followed by copper azole and borate? (I'm not an expert, but I suspect there might be another corrosive effect.) posted by Eric on 01.29.05 at 12:19 PM
Comments
Arsenic or ammonia? Hmmm.... The Fabian-socialist Left's strategy seems to be to bore us to death with all these economic regulations. I much prefer fighting Senator Coburn's regulations on how many girls will be allowed to use the bathroom at any time in order to stamp out Sapphism. Much sexier an issue. The McKinnonite Left has its own version of sexual regulation in the form of "sexual harassment" laws, in which the very desire for sex is "oppression". Steven Malcolm Anderson (Cato theElder) the Lesbian-worshipping man's-man-admiring myth-based egoist · January 29, 2005 05:09 PM Don't throw in the sponge, har! har! And I won't throw in the towel. Steven Malcolm Anderson (Cato theElder) the Lesbian-worshipping man's-man-admiring myth-based egoist · January 29, 2005 05:11 PM Curse my parents for letting me go around licking the wall studs! Beck · January 29, 2005 08:56 PM |
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Being of the opinion that humankind
has a limited number of basic scripts
that we keep playing out, I am currently
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