But recent developments have placed CCA-treated wood under siege. Last month, for example, a lawsuit filed in U.S. District Court in Miami against producers and distributors of CCA-treated wood claims the product is unsafe and seeks, among other demands, medical monitoring of people who come in contact with it. The same study has spurred Florida regulators to review the state's policy of allowing CCA-treated wood to be dumped in unlined landfills. The consensus is the field should move away from general poisons to targeted treatments. That evolution requires a better understanding of the mechanisms of decay and the biology of wood-attacking organisms.
Wood decay is initiated primarily by fungi.
Goodell and Steven D. Aust, a biotechnologist at Utah State University, described efforts to understand how these fungi work. Damage caused by these fungi can cause injury and even death because they rapidly weaken structures even before decay is visible, he said. Goodell's work has helped clarify how brown-rot fungi degrade wood. Among the products are oxygen radicals, which attack lignocellulose. The fungi produce the hydrogen peroxide, but where the ferrous ions come from has not been clear, Goodell said, because almost all iron in aerobic environments where wood and fungi exist occurs in the ferric form.