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Wood shavings - questionable treated wood
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Posted by
ladybug_0820 7 (
My Page) on
Sun, Apr 29, 12 at 7:58
| so for the past year, I've had my future vegetable garden covered with weedguard, and we'd been piling all our fall leaves there. A year ago, we had a sunroom built and the guy dumped all the wood shavings on top of the leaves.
I cleared much of it away this spring to get ready for veggies. My 'soil' is clay, so I have to add lots of amendments, compost, etc. While I cleared much of the shavings away, some of it ended up in the ground.
I am assuming this wood was treated, as it was for a sunroom, but I don't know. How paranoid do I need to be about this? I've already dug teh holes, mixed compost in, planted the tomatoes, etc. Would it be harmful to the plants? to us? both? If I had to dig everything up, I'd have to abandon the garden until next year :( |
Follow-Up Postings:
RE: Wood shavings - questionable treated wood
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| A year ago? No worries. Most likely he used as little treated lumber as possible (it's more expensive) and "treated" lumber isn't treated with arsenic like it had been. Someone will follow up with a post regarding the specifics, but you're good to go ;) |
RE: Wood shavings - questionable treated wood
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| oh thank you, I have literally lost sleep over this....I look forward to other thoughts as well :) |
RE: Wood shavings - questionable treated wood
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| Maybe this link will help. If you don't know what the wood was treated with can you find out by asking the guy? |
Here is a link that might be useful: treated wood link
RE: Wood shavings - questionable treated wood
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| Most lumber is pressure treated not chemical treated But if its not real wood that can be different. |
RE: Wood shavings - questionable treated wood
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The USEPA was in the process of banning CCA Pressure Treated wood, because of childrens exposure to it, when the manufacturers voluntarily pulled it off the market. Whether the current ACQ PT wood posses any potential poisoning is not known, at this time, just keep in mind that it took some 50 years to find that Arsenic leached from the CCA wood and children were ingesting it.
Many studies indicated that plants did not uptake the heave metal poisons that leached from Pressure Treated wood, although Arsenic is a normal micro nutrient in most plants.
If one uses Pressure Treated wood in the garden, or if some is mixed in with the mulches, a gardeners major exposure will be in handling that material since plants are not very likely to uptake and store any of the heavy metals that might leach from that wood. Would I use PT wood in my garden? No!. But if some did get there I would not get very paranoid about it. |
RE: Wood shavings - questionable treated wood
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| I wouldn't worry too much either, ladybug. The C in ACQ stands for copper, which is not nearly as toxic as the chromium and arsenic that went away with CCA. And there would have to be a lot of it to make any measurable difference in your soil anyway, regardless of what it is. |
RE: Pressure and chemical treament
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| blazeaglory wrote: "Most lumber is pressure treated not chemical treated." Actually they use pressure to get the chemicals into the wood, so it's both. |
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