Denton’s South Lakes Park playground still has traces of arsenic

by Chesley Roberts of North Texas Daily

Ed Soph of the UNT Jazz Studies faculty, along with Denton residents, is urging city officials to do more about the traces of arsenic found in wood at Eureka Playground - the only park equipment in Denton still containing contaminated wood.

Eureka Playground, in Denton's South Lakes Park on Hobson Road, was built in 1994 using wood treated with preservative chromate copper arsenate - before concerns became public.

Once treated with the preservative chromate copper arsenate, the wood was sealed, but when the sealant is rubbed down, the arsenic can leach out and onto the hands of those who touch the wood, Denton City Councilman Kenneth Banks said. The arsenic might then be directly ingested through hand-to-mouth contact or indirectly through food or toys if hands are not washed thoroughly, he said.

City officials said they have done all they reasonably can to minimize the risk to children playing at the playground and are regularly monitoring the equipment for safety.

Banks said that once the city became aware of concerns about the preservative, the city, along with Reed Engineering, started testing Eureka Playground annually by taking wipe samples of soil and park surfaces. Reed Engineers took 73 wipe tests between 2003 and 2007.

"We are going out, targeting the most weathered spots and aggressively trying to dislodge the arsenic," Banks said. "We always want to look at the worst-case scenarios."

Reed Engineering found the arsenic risk to one in 1 million children, based upon the standards set by a report from the Hazardous Substance and Waste Management Research, Inc. The research company was financed by a company representing the chromate copper arsenate wood industry.

All handrails and other highly trafficked areas have been replaced by plastic, along with all picnic tables. A sign was placed in front warning parents to wash children's hands after playing on the structure and a Web site is listed where people can go for further information.

The Denton Independent School district has removed all chromate copper arsenate treated wood from parks and playgrounds except for Eureka Playground.

Emerson Vorel, director of Denton Parks and Recreation, said it would cost more than $1 million to completely replace the playground but did not specify whether lack of funding was the sole reasoning behind leaving it as is.

However, Soph and other residents said they are not ready to give up the fight to get the playground removed.

"The city bases its decision to maintain Eureka, at considerable expense to the public, rather than replace it with a safe structure," Soph said. "On an economic premise: It is too expensive to remove the structure and replace it."

In 2003 the Environmental Protection Agency announced a "phase out" of the treated wood and has since banned the use of the wood within residential settings.

Soph said he and other residents led a campaign in 2003 to try to get the city to replace the playground. The group said it worries about children ages 2 to 6 years old who could be exposed because they "constantly have hand-to-mouth contact" with the wood.

"It has been scientifically established that we all carry an unhealthful 'body burden' of toxic chemicals and substances," Soph said. "This one, the arsenic exposure and danger posed by Eureka to the youngsters playing on and around the structure, is clearly avoidable."

However, Banks said there is debate over how much arsenic actually comes off onto the hands and how much children must ingest to cause significant harm.

According to the Environmental Protection Agency's Web site, Humans consume organic and inorganic arsenic every day in food and the air but the amounts are minute. Inorganic arsenic is riskier then organic arsenic, however, and prolonged exposure to young people needs to be taken into account because long-term exposure to concentrated organic arsenic could be related to an elevated risk of lung and bladder cancer, the site said.