Seasonal arsenic exposure from burning chromium-copper-arsenate-treated wood
H. A. Peters, W. A. Croft, E. A. Woolson, B. A. Darcey and M. A. Olson
All eight members of a rural Wisconsin family experienced recurring
neurological and medical illness over three years, especially during the
winter months. Arsenic, in concentrations of 12 to 87 ppm, was noted in the
hair of the mother and father, and analysis of hair and fingernails of all
family members demonstrated pathological levels of arsenic. For four years
the five-room home had been heated with a small wood stove in which outdoor
or marine plywood and wood remnants had been preferentially burned. Stove
ashes that contained more than 1,000 ppm of arsenic contaminated the living
area, and the ratio of copper, chromium, and arsenic pentoxide in this ash
matched the ratio used in the chromium-copper-arsenate-treated wood.
