Somewhere in the region of 50,000
to 150,000 remedial timber treatments are carried out in British
homes each year. Considering the frequency at which most homes change
ownership, the enthusiasm with which many surveyors and mortgage lenders
recommend remedial treatments against rot and wood worm, and the fact
that most timber treatments carry guarantees of 20-30 years, it is
highly probable that many of these treatments are entirely unnecessary.
The implication is that toxic chemicals with long
term residual activity are being applied to residential buildings where
residents are unwittingly exposed to them. Indeed a recent paper in the Journal
of Architectural Conservation warned of the toxic hazards to workers
from old but still active treatments which used pentachlorophenol (PCP)
over 30 years ago . Unnecessary repeat treatments exacerbate this
problem.
Timbercheck seeks to address this problem by
providing an analysis service which will look for active timber
treatment chemicals in samples of timber. Property owners who have been
advised to carry out remedial treatments can contact Timbercheck who
will send a sampling kit with instructions. The owner then takes samples
and sends them back to Timbercheck who carry out the analysis and send a
report to the owner.
Analyses cost £100 each or £175 for two samples and
£240 for three, exclusive of VAT. The cost also includes a woodworm
trap which will attract emerging adult beetles. The trap can be returned
to Timbercheck up to a year after the analysis for identification of any
beetles caught. The service currently focuses on insecticides, but
fungicides can also be analysed for an additional cost. However, since
treatments generally include both insecticides and fungicides, finding
one suggests that the other is present.
A service like this should be made available to every
house buyer and surveyors should be encouraged to use and recommend it
in order to eliminate the unnecessary use of pesticides in homes. It
should also be compulsory for those carrying out timber treatments to
fix a permanent label to the treated areas indicated what was applied
and when.
Timbercheck, 26 Harling Bank, Kirby Lonsdale, Carnforth, Lancs LA6 2DJ Tel/Fax: 015242 71769
[This article first appeared in Pesticides News No. 32, June 1996, page 22]