ABSTRACT
The U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) staff completed a series of investigations that estimated the potential exposure and risk of young children to arsenic while playing on playground equipment composed of CCA (chromated copper arsenate)-treated wood. Prior to sampling in-use field structures composed of CCA-treated wood, studies were undertaken to create a standard sampling protocol for quantifying arsenic migration from CCA-treated wood and to establish a correlation between the amount of chemical removed by a human hand and a cloth surrogate. These studies resulted in: 1) the development of an efficient extraction method for chemical residues collected on a human hand, 2) the development of a sampling device for consistent surrogate measurements, 3) establishment of a correlation between surrogate and hand measurements, and 4) the development of a standard human hand and surrogate sampling protocol for quantifying arsenic migration from CCA-treated wood. These studies also examined factors such as approaching a maximum hand load, effects of re-rubbing the same area of a board, and comparison of surrogate materials. The results from sampling CCA-treated wood with methods described in this article were later employed to obtain field data used in exposure and risk assessments.
Notes
These videos were made several years ago by CPSC for a different issue concerning playground equipment.
*Includes ease of digestion (or extraction) and background interference during analysis.
**The properties of the material must be the same regardless of source.
***Fair on new boards.
****Contains chromium.
*Saline-wetted polyester surrogate.
**Further studies comparing arsenic transfer to the hand and these surrogates are presented in the accompanying manuscript (Levenson et al. 2004).
†The results of the field investigation in Phase III showed that HDPE may not be suitable for field measurements, and this material was not used in the Phase IV sampling of playset structures (Levenson et al. 2004).