Builders want law on safer timber treatments

Builders want timber treatment companies to be regulated by the Government after workers handling chemically treated wood coughed up blood and suffered nose bleeds.

Industry representatives plan to meet Building and Housing Department officials today to call for legally enforceable health and safety standards rather than a voluntary code.

Builders handling timber treated with light organic solvent preservatives - a process that uses various chemicals, one of which is lead-based - have suffered skin irritations, nose bleeds and headaches, and have coughed up blood. The treatment is used to preserve wood and frames in thousands of new homes every year.

Registered Master Builders Federation chief executive Pieter Burghout said problems had emerged since the treatment process was introduced after the leaky buildings crisis. The process was safe if timber was "flashed off" - properly dried after treatment - but some treatment companies were not meeting obligations under a voluntary code.

Asked how many workers had become sick, Mr Burghout replied: "If I knew that, we'd probably be marching on Parliament.

"We've been pushing the department to do something at a standards or regulatory level, rather than it being a code of practice, which is voluntary. We're regulatory-averse. But when it's about health and safety, we think that it should be standardised across the whole industry."

Auckland timber preservatives manufacturer Arch Wood Protection has stopped supplying a lead-based treatment chemical and will offer only the "milder and much more benign" alternative, Azole.

Group marketing manager Peter Carruthers agreed regulation would ensure timber was properly flashed, but said timber treated with tributyl tin was more likely to make people sick. The company's decision to stop supplying the tin-based product reflected higher tin prices as well as safety concerns.

"Considering there's very little commercial difference now for selling either, we might as well sell the one that's safer."

The tin-based chemical had been withdrawn from use in Britain, the European Union and Japan, and was no longer used in Australia, he said.

National's associate building and construction spokesman, Bob Clarkson, has called for an inquiry into the health and environmental effects of tin-based timber treatment chemicals.

Mr Clarkson urged other suppliers to follow suit and offer "less toxic" alternatives.

- © Fairfax NZ News