NEWS Environmental Building News (March 2010) Features What's Happening Product News & Reviews BackPage Primers Opinion GreenSource Magazine EBN Archives

Safer Pest Control:
Management of Wood-Destroying Insects

The historic district of New Orleans—like much of the rest of the city—is being ravaged by termites. The city is at particular risk because huge quantities of wood were installed underground to stabilize buildings when the city was built on the unstable Mississippi River delta, and because this is where Formosan termites, a particularly voracious species, first gained a foothold in the Continental U.S. Indeed, damage from termites is so severe in Louisiana that a statewide mandate for preservative-treated wood nearly made it into the books this year (see EBN Vol. 9, No. 3). But damage is by no means limited to Louisiana. In Hawaii, where Formosan termites have been a problem the longest in the U.S., building codes now require framing in steel or entirely out of preservative-treated wood—for a typical 2,000 ft² (185 m²) house with chromated copper arsenate (CCA) treated wood, this means a total of about 250 pounds (113 kg) of the compound inside the building envelope. Termite damage in the U.S. today is estimated at $1 billion to $3 billion per year. At least a third of that damage is from the Formosan termite, which was accidentally introduced from China.
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