Standards Australia

Relevant Standards
Standards Committee Composition
Committee Meeting Attendance
New Draft Standard on Safe Use
References

Relevant Standards

It is the existence of Australian standards that has reassured shire councillors and others responsible for installing treated timber in public areas with the thought: ‘Of course its OK for kiddies to play on CCA timber, the standard says it’s OK’. But how reliable are these standards? The relevant standards produced by Standards Australia are:

• AS/NZS 2843 Timber Preservation Plant Safety Code
• AS/NZS 1604 Standards for Specification of Preservative Treatment
• AS/NZS 1605 Methods for sampling and analysing timber preservatives and preservative-treated timber
• AS5605 Guide to the safe use of preservative-treated timber (Interim standard)

These standards are currently undergoing revision.

Standards Australia has attracted some criticism for the way its standard setting committees are stacked with industry people as can be seen in the Table below:

Membership of the Standards Committee for Timber Preservatives

The ‘independent’ chairperson has been placed in the timber interests camp because it is Harry Greaves, who is chair of the Timber Preservers Association of Australia’s (TPAA) technical committee. The TPAA is ‘an organisation comprising timber treaters, suppliers of preservatives, research organisation and individuals and organisation having an interest in the use of preservative treated timber.’ TPAA has worked closely with Koppers Arch in defence of CCA. Some say TPAA was specifically formed to add another industry voice to the standards committee. Its former technical committee chair was an employee of Koppers-Hickson and represented the TPAA on the standards committee.

Greaves supplied the content for the TPAA website which states that ‘In normal conditions, the use of treated timbers presents no hazards to people or animals or the environment’ and that CCA preservatives ‘will not leach out even when in contact with running water’ (http://www.tpaa.com.au/). Greaves was recently quoted in the Tasmanian Mercury as saying that ‘A child would need to crawl on a fresh deck every day of its life and lick up every piece of arsenic to have an increased risk.’ (Whinnett, 2003)

The CSIRO Division of Forest Products, has also been placed in the timber interests camp because it has been funded by various timber preservation companies, including Koppers Arch. CSIRO Forestry and Forest Products candidly states on its web page: ‘We work closely with industry, and are keen to provide collaborative or contracted services to complement our efforts in fundamental research’ (CSIRO, 2003a). The Housing Industry Association and Department of Primary Industries and Fisheries Queensland do have interests in timber, but they have been given the benefit of the doubt and labelled as independent.

Committee Meeting Attendance

The situation of perceived bias is exacerbated by the fact that the consumers’ representative and the independent expert from RMIT do not seem to attend the meetings (see Table below). This means that the person representing Engineers Australia is one of the few members of the committee without a vested interest. Peter Campbell, who has represented Engineers Australia on the committee, has pointed out although he has been the only engineer on the committee, he had great difficulties having his concerns incorporated in the standards because of what he calls ‘vendor capture’ of the Standards (Beder 1999).

Standards Australia Timber Preservation Committee Meeting Attendance

New Draft Standard on Safe Use

The committee has drafted a new standard, AS5605: Guide to the Safe Use of Preservative-Treated Timber. Given the composition of the committee which drafted it and the attendance at meetings it is not surprising that this is a very weak document. In the forward it states that “routine monitoring by state occupational health authorities in Australia over the past decade has not produced any evidence to suggest that properly treated, commercially used timber in Australia is damaging to individual health when appropriate personal protection measures are employed” and the risk is “quite minimal” because “preservatives are localized on and within the wood” (Standards Australia, 2003). However it does not note that no health studies have been done of the impacts of CCA treated timber on health and that the long-term chronic health impacts, such as lung cancer, are not specific to treated timber exposure and are unlikely to be identified as such.

The standard does however recognise that some people are more sensitive than others and that people should “take normal common-sense precautions” when handling treated timber “to avoid splinters and inhalation of dust” and that “offcuts and waste material should not be burnt in confined spaces or in barbeques”. In addition it recommends that CCA-treated timber should not be placed in direct contact with foodstuffs or drinking water, although it seems to think that CCA-treated timber structures in large bodies of water upstream of water supply, such as wharves, docks and bridges, are okay. Surprisingly, the standard says that small quantities of CCA-treated timber off-cuts and waste “may be disposed by ordinary waste collection or burial” (Standards Australia, 2003).

The Worldwide Fund for Nature (WWF) is amongst those concerned about several aspects of this proposed standard. In its submission, WWF criticised the Standard’s lack of mandatory restrictions for the use of CCA treated timber and the lack of management suggestions to prevent CCA-treated timber contaminating used wood intended for fuel wood (Rouse, 2004)