Use of treated woods in roof assembly

On February 12, 2002, the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) announced a voluntary decision by industry to move consumer use of treated lumber products away from a variety of pressure-treated wood that contains Arsenate (As) by December 31, 2003, in favor of new alternative wood preservatives. It is the purpose of this report to outline legislative efforts to ban the use of chromated copper arsenate (CCA)-treated wood for residential roofing in the State of Oregon. At the time that the legislation was introduced, it was coincidental that the National Roofing Contractors Association (NRCA) recommended that CCA-treated wood should not be used in residential roofing. A summary of the report is included in this review. Finally, we discuss some of the potentially harmful environmental hazards of wood preservatives on the environment. In addition to the toxicity of pressure-treated wood on our environment, we point out that wood as well as pressure-treated wood assemblies are highly flammable. Consequently, we recommend the use of residential roofing systems that have Class A fire protection for the homeowner. Because residential roof fires remain a life-threatening danger to residential homeowners in the United States, we describe a national fire prevention program for reducing residential roof fires by use of an Underwriters Laboratories Inc. (UL) and National Fire Protection Association Class A fire-rated roof system.