Your search resulted in 466 documents. Displaying 25 entries per page.
Remedial treatment of wood attacked by insects
1981 - IRG/WP 3175
A review is presented of remedial treatments against wood-boring insects in wood in service. Preconditions and fundamental principles of insect control are compared with the control of fungal attack and reasons are given for the fact that remedial treatments against insects are more commonly applied than against fungi. With regard to insect control measures with a simultaneous preventive effective...
H Kühne
Testing wood in ground contact: An artificial soil
1977 - IRG/WP 280
This document is an interim report on the development of the artificial soil medium. It includes some information on the relationship between soil, wood and water which is of relevance in testing....
E F Baines, D J Dickinson, J F Levy
Progress report on collaborative experiments on testing with basidiomycetes
1982 - IRG/WP 2184
The present Document reviews results provided by participants as at 1 May 1982 and draws preliminary conclusions....
A F Bravery
Sub-group on Basidiomycete tests: Responses to proposals for programme of work
1980 - IRG/WP 2137
A F Bravery
Standardisation of tests of toxicity of preservatives to soft rot fungi
1978 - IRG/WP 2119
J G Savory
A laboratory method for assessing the effectiveness of remedial treatments in preventing post-treatment emergence of Anobium punctatum
1982 - IRG/WP 2175
R W Berry
A potential anti-sapstain chemical for sawmills
1984 - IRG/WP 3300
Several biocidal formulations were tested under laboratory conditions in order to discover an alternative antisapstain chemical to chlorophenoxides. The formulations tested were experimental water solutions containing a quaternary ammonium chloride, a commercial fungicide and/or a sodium salt of some carboxylic acids. The effect of sodium carbonate and borax decahydrate in mixture with a quaternar...
I A Linderborg
An evaluation of CCA, CCB and CCP preservatives using a "sandwich test"
1991 - IRG/WP 2370
The last two years has seen some important changes in standards and preservative types used in Scandinavia, which have led to a wider choice for specifiers. In order to identify those treatments suitable for replacement or reinforcement of decayed constructional timbers, it was felt necessary to modify the standard EN 113 test. Impregnated blocks were sandwiched between two untreated blocks, previ...
A P Koch, L B Sheard
Studies on the destruction by marine wood boring organisms of fishing boats in the Eastern Black Sea of Turkey
1977 - IRG/WP 427
The present paper concerns the problem of fishing boats which are attacked by wood boring organisms in the Black Sea of Turkey. The aims of this study are: 1) to identify the marine wood boring organisms attacking fishing boats in the Northern Black Sea of Turkey; 2) to identify the wood species that are used in boat building construction and assess their durability; 3) to assess the degree of att...
R Ilhan, O A Sekendiz
Chemical, physical and biological factors affecting wood decomposition in forest soils
2003 - IRG/WP 03-20281
Organic matter (OM) decomposition is an important variable in determining the potential of forest soils to sequester atmospheric CO2. Studies using OM from a particular location gives site-specific decomposition information, but differences in OM type and quality make it difficult to compare results among soils and forest ecosystems. By using a “standard” OM in decomposition studies, OM qual...
M Jurgensen, P Laks, D Reed, A Collins, D Page-Dumroese, D Crawford
Final proposals for collaborative work on laboratory soft rot testing
1987 - IRG/WP 2292
In this paper proposals are made to scope, timbers, preservatives, leaching, drying, soil type, moisture content, soil burial (blocks and stakes), incubation and dry weight determination and the expression of results....
D J Dickinson, S M Gray
Bending creep test of plywoods under long term exposure to fungal attack
1981 - IRG/WP 2163
Bending creep test and decay test were coupled in order to evaluate the durability of structural plywoods and preservative efficacy. Experimental blocks, 5.0 x 1.2 cm² section x 35.0 cm length, were impregnated with distilled water and inoculated with mycelial fragments of test fungus. Polyethylene bags stretched with metal frame were used as decay chambers. The chambers containing inoculated blo...
M Takahashi
Data requirements for wood preservatives in the EU Biocides Directive
2001 - IRG/WP 01-50166-08
Directive 98/8/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council concerning the placing of biocidal products (the Biocidal Products Directive, BPD) lays down the requirements on data needed for authorisation of a biocidal product and approval of its active substance(s). The dossier must contain data needed for the proper risk assessment of the biocidal product. A detailed technical guidance documen...
H Braunschweiler
Effect of soft-rot decay on the static bending strength of wood
1991 - IRG/WP 2361
In this study, a modified static bending test has been developed as a method for measuring soft-rot decay in soil bed studies. A good correlation was found between the strength loss of the southern pine test specimens and extent of decay. This data suggests that it may be possible to develop a dynamic test based on stress relaxation that is more sensitive than static bending....
D D Nicholas, J A Wilson, R C Vasishth
The Biocidal Products Directive ( 98/8/EC ) - its consequences for the wood preservation industry
2001 - IRG/WP 01-50166-04
1. The Current Position
This European Union Directive is one of the most technically complex pieces of legislation that has been developed by the European Commission (EC). Although the Directive was to have been implemented in the legislation of individual Member States of the EU by May 2000 progress has been slow. A number of Member States have yet to declare the Competent Authority who will handle their legislation. The body text of the Directive cannot stand-alone and is dependent on ancillary regulations and the development of technical guidance for both the Competent Authorities in the Member States and also industry to understand their roles in the whole process for the regulation of biocides and the biocidal products containing them. The process is far from complete in terms of a piece of workable legislation and this leaves not only industry but also the Competent Authorities with significant areas of uncertainty. This is potentially economically and socially damaging to the marketing and use of biocides and biocidal products. Because of this evolutionary process this paper can only be written in general terms as by the time the symposium takes place some significant changes to the position at the time of writing may have occurred.
2. Background
The Biocidal Products Directive (98/8/EC), (BPD), is a directive which requires that biocides ( as active substances) are approved for use within the EU and the individual biocidal products containing these active substances are approved for use by the Competent Authority(s) of the Member State(s) in which it is intended to market the product. The product authorisation obtained in the first Member State should be mutually recognised by the other Member States in which application for authorisation to place the product on the market is sought. The Directive has to be seen in the context various other Directives, notably the Plant Protection Directive 91/414/EC). Biocidal products are grouped in the directive into twenty three "product types" and wood preservatives are Product Type 8. The intention of the directive is to harmonise the requirements for the placing of biocidal products and active ingredients on the market throughout the EU. EU wide use of so-called Common Principles are intended to be used to assess the dossiers in order to achieve a common approach and eliminate the current situation where individual Member States apply their own particular national approaches and criteria in the assessment and regulation of products . Annex IIA of the directive identifies the data requirements for the active substance and Annex II B for the biocidal product. There are additional data requirements identified in Annexes IIIA and IIIB for each product type reflecting potential for exposure to man and the environment.
3. Entry onto Annex I
Any new active substance will require approval before it or any biocidal products including it can be placed on the market. The dossier to be submitted to the EC will have to include additional data and risk assessments for the product types (as defined in the BPD) in which it will be intended to be used. For those active substances that are accepted as being existing substances on the market before May 2000 (say in wood preservatives) these will be ranked and prioritised. This process is being defined in the so-called: Review Regulations.
4. An environmental directive
There is no doubt that this Directive has a high environmental content in terms of the data and the associated risk assessments which are to be prepared. The protocols and the end points for some of these data requirements are still being developed. In general the EC considers that modelling exposure using human and environmental exposure scenarios covering the end use of the product is an acceptable approach . Data are required to enable these scenarios to be modelled and risk assessments made. It is necessary that regulators do not make decisions based on hazard assessment alone in the absence of fully worked out and agreed emission scenarios to define exposure levels which generate a realistic worst case risk assessment. Risk is a function of both hazard and exposure. A lot of work has been done in the development of Technical Notes for Guidance intended to help the regulator and the applicant in the submission and the interpretation of the data. Whilst it may be the case that the human toxicity data requirements still leave questions to be answered it is in the environmental aspects part of the regulatory process where there is still much work to be done. The Directive would seem to rely heavily on the development of Pass / Fail criteria in simulation tests. This is a big subject and of key importance to the risk assessment.
5. Wood preservatives ---- a test case
Wood preservation has achieved a certain reputation. On the one hand it is said that a prime reason for the development of the Biocidal Products Directive arose from European problems in the regulation of the marketing and use of dangerous substances, notably wood preservatives. On the other hand because wood preservatives have been regulated by a number of Member States for many years it is believed they are well understood. The EC and the Member States also wanted to be seen to have achieved early success in the implementation of the Directive therefore the decision was taken to start, following failings with the speed of progress of the Plant Protection Products Directive, with a product type they knew all about i.e. wood preservatives. There is no doubt that there is a much greater understanding on the exposure scenarios, both human and environmental, for wood preservatives than many other product types. However, would it not have been better to have tackled some of the other product types where such an understanding is much less well developed? It is regrettable that the EC and Member States did not feel able to accept the results of an EC sponsored study (Haskoning report) on the assessment of risks for all the product types covered under the BPD. The results of this study clearly showed that wood preservatives did not constitute the most significant risk to man or the environment and in fact the risk was significantly greater for other product types.
6. Wood preservatives and the OECD Biocides Programme
Another speaker will be covering this subject in more detail. Suffice it to say that because of the perception there was good knowledge about wood preservatives again they were selected as the pilot for an OECD project looking at environmental and human exposure assessment under the OECD Biocides Programme. The findings from two OECD Workshops actually demonstrated there was still much to be learnt about wood preservatives in order to refine the risk assessments to a state where they would be sufficient for the requirements of the BPD. This work is ongoing but it clearly demonstrates the problems that both the regulator and industry will have in the preparation and the assessment of the dossiers for both the active substances and the biocidal products. This is especially the case for other biocidal products that have not been subject to the same kind of regulation that wood preservatives have subjected to in the past.
7. Inorganic and organic biocides
With current wood preservation technology there is still a dependence on inorganic chemicals such as copper (in conjunction with other biocides) or with chromium, as well as arsenic and boron for many end use applications. This is very much the case where a long term service life is a key factor in the use of treated wood for that end use. These substances are commodity chemicals and are also covered under the Existing Substances Regulations (EC) 1488/94. There is also work going on revising the Technical Notes for Guidance covering them . This includes a significant addition in the environmental risk assessment area. Efforts are being made to integrate and coordinate the requirements for both the BPD and the Existing Substances Regulations and OSPAR ( OSPAR Convention for the Protection of the Marine Environment of the North-East Atlantic). OSPAR refers to the Oslo Paris Convention. Whilst the BPD seems primarily aimed at the regulation of biocides based on organic chemicals wood preservative products may contain both inorganic and organic components. Indeed there are probably few wood preservative formulations on the market that contain only one active substance. This must have a significant impact on the way the dossiers are prepared for the active substance and the biocidal products and how they are assessed both at the EC and the Member State level.
8. Consequences of the BPD for the wood preservation industry
Whilst this paper addresses the consequences for the wood preservation industry per se, it must not be overlooked that there may be implications for the fabricaÈors of articles made from treated timber. Some current wood preservative formulations may over a period of time be withdrawn from the market because the risks and costs of generating the data and the preparation of the dossier make the product economically unviable. The presence of large working volumes of wood preservative solutions at treatment plants requires realistic withdrawal periods to avoid the unnecessary disposal and associated environmental risk of products that have been used satisfactorily for many years.
9. Availability of active substances
The structure of the industry has changed dramatically in the past few months and there is no doubt that other changes both within and outside the wood preservation industry itself are yet to happen. The original differentiation between formulator of wood preservatives and active substance suppliers to the wood preservation industry has become blurred. Some of the active substances used in wood preservation are used in other either other biocidal product types or in products regulated under another directive, e.g. Plant Protection Products Directive 91/414/EC.
10. Data protection
This continues to be a key issue for industry and some companies may find it strategically or financially necessary not to support an active substance in a particular product type thus leaving that sector without being able to use the active substance. The coming months will start to reveal which active substances are likely to be supported, at least through the notification process. Formulators are therefore in a close dialogue with their suppliers to try to determine their intentions on whether or not they intend to support their active substance. Today's wood preservative formulations are largely multi active substance based. Product costs, efficacy spectra, niche marketing and other considerations have made this process inevitable. New wood preservative formulations take time to research and develop and the continuity of availability of a choice of active substances is of key importance. A lack of adequate return on investment necessary to sustain the development of new products could have a negative impact on innovation and the rate of introduction of new products. It is extremely unlikely that any new active substance will be solely developed for use in wood preservation. This would be an effect contrary to expectations of the EC. The situation with wood preservatives is complicated by the fact that treated wood is a construction product and comes under the scope of the Construction Products Directive (89/106/EEC) (CPD). Products under the scope of the CPD are required to meet certain so-called essential requirements and one of these is durability. Demonstration of compliance involves the extensive suite of CEN wood preservative efficacy tests. Even relatively small changes in formulations may require extensive re-testing under the EN 599 regime in some Member States.
11. Task Forces
Companies are encouraged by the EC to enter into Task Forces in order to reduce the burden of testing on animals and also to reduce the number of dossiers to be reviewed for each active substance. Ideally, and understandably, the EC would like one dossier per active substance. Parts of the wood preservation industry have been co-operating in Task Forces and much practical experience has been gained. Even closer co-operation will be required and this will enable companies to pool experience and expertise and manage their financial exposure to potentially high regulatory costs by sharing them amongst a larger number of parties.
12. Financial aspects
Industry will have to make some best guesses with respect to its investment programmes for supporting its portfolio of products. Formulators and active substance suppliers are likely to group into Task Forces in order to reduce their costs in terms of data generation and the fees likely to be charged at the EU and the Member State level for the assessment of the dossiers. The compilation of the dossiers requires specialist expertise to assist the industrial applicant(s). This is likely to cost in the order of £100,000 per active substance, not including the costs of generating any data. The Rapporteur State's costs for reviewing the dossier is also expected to be of the same order. Clearly these kinds of costs will impact on innovation. An adequate payback must be available to the company to justify this level of investment.
13. Will mutual recognition work?
Member States are required to recognise the authorisation of the biocidal product placed on the market in the first Member State when subsequent applications are made to place the product on the market. This is a fundamental principle of the BPD, although there is concern that Member States continue to have enough flexibility to prevent this happening if there are particular concerns in that Member State. Industry very much hopes this will not be the case and that mutual recognition, a fundamental principle of the BPD, will work in practice.
14. Environmental aspects
Biocidal products such as wood preservatives are generally applied in controlled situations and not over large areas. Consequently any emissions can be considered to be from discreet sources, such as treated timber or potentially from timber treatment plants. This is in contrast to plant protection products and some other biocidal products that are usually dispersed over a relatively large area. Because of this a lot of work is required to be done to re evaluate how the environmental aspects of biocidal products such as wood preservatives can be assessed in an objective manner. The criteria that define an emission and how the PEC (Predicted Environmental Concentration) for each environmental compartment is determined are critical. The wood preservation industry, through the EWPM (European Wood Preservative Manufacturers Group), has been working with institutes and other interested parties in a co-operation known as the EFG (Environment Focus Group) to progress the development of appropriate methodology. Data will be required for both primary and secondary exposure to treated timber. The protocols for this work are yet to be agreed. This work is being further progressed in the OECD together with input from CEN TC 38 WG27. This co-operation between the OECD and CEN is extremely significant in that it is, I believe, the first time such a co-operation has taken place in the development of an OECD Guideline. If one considers all of the end uses where treated timber may be found carrying out a risk assessment with few guidelines on how it should be done is a very uncertain process for both industry and the regulator. Reliance on so-called expert opinion may be inadequate.
15. Comparative assessment (the substitution principle)
This is a process whereby the health safety and environmental properties of acti_u101 ? substances used in the same product type could be compared and those with the most undesirable properties would not be placed on Annex I. Consequently biocidal products containing them would have to be removed from the market. This process is embodied in the BPD but it was initially considered that it would only be applied in the event of problems arising with active substances or products containing them rather than being used as a screening tool early on in the review process for active substances. This area is still an uncertain one with Member States having different interpretations of this principle. It is unfortunate that the wood preservation industry could be used to test out this concept at a European level. The consequences of this principle could be further losses of active substances available to the wood preservative formulators.
16. Substances of concern
The BPD is not only concerned with the active substances that are formulated into the biocidal product but also with so-called "substances of concern". These are defined as any substance, other than the active substance, which has the inherent capacity to cause an adverse effect on humans, animals or the environment and is present or is produced in a biocidal product in sufficient concentration to create such an effect. There are significant implications for the formulator of the biocidal product . The formulator may have to submit an extensive dossier containing toxicological and metabolic as well as ecological data on each of the substances of concern when seeking approval for the biocidal product. There may be classes of compounds that become unavailable to the formulator either because of the risks posed by the co-formulant or because the cost of generating data will be uneconomic.
17. The wood preservation Industry's view on the BPD
Industry has supported the development of the BPD since its conception in 1989. It is still supportive it but believes that the degree of complexity is disproportionate to the level of risk when it comes to wood preservatives. After all wood preservatives have been regulated for a long time and in reality there have been few significant health safety and environmental problems associated with them. Industry believes there is no need to determine an absolute understanding about a biocide and its application but rather there is a need to determine the level of understanding that will enable characterisation so that a risk assessment can be made. The wood preservation industry has sought either directly or through representative bodies a pro-active and collaborative approach with the regulators although at times this appears to have encouraged inappropriate demands. The regulators have invariably responded positively to this however they may not always understand the burden in both time and resource in having made wood preservatives the test case. Industry hopes that its efforts to be pro-active will be recognised and will be dealt with equitably when considered before the other product types defined in the Biocidal Products Directive.
D Aston
Germination of basidiospores on preservative treated wood after leaching or natural weathering
1981 - IRG/WP 2150
In tests of residual toxic efficacy after leaching or natural weathering, spore germination with Gloeophyllum trabeum has proved to be a less reliable criterion of attack than when used with unaged preservative treatments. Since spores sometimes prove more tolerant than their parent mycelium, their use should be continued....
J K Carey
Soft rot tests
1983 - IRG/WP 2206
At the IRG meeting in Turkey it was proposed that developments in testing preservative-treated wood in unsterile soil according to techniques variously described as "fungus cellar", "soil-bed", or "accelerated field simulation" be considered along with conventional laboratory procedures as the basis for a standard test. Before formulating any co-operative test programme it is essential to examine ...
J A Butcher
Correlation between different international standard assessment procedures with termites. Part 1: Field exposure
1983 - IRG/WP 1198
Ramin treated with copper-chrome-arsenic (CCA), pentachlorophenate and lindane, each at three retentions, and three other untreated timbers were assessed in the field against Coptotermes lacteus and Nasutitermes exitiosus. Replicate specimens were exposed around five mounds of each termite species over a period of five years in south-eastern Australia. The field results provided the basis for judg...
M Lenz, C D Howick, N Tamblyn, J W Creffield, M Westcott
Soil-bed studies. Part 2: The efficacy of wood preservative
1983 - IRG/WP 2205
Various methods of decay assessment were investigated. Three stages or phases of decay were identified which could be used to describe the efficacy of a preservative system or virulence of a soil-bed testing medium. These included the lag, decay, and senescent phase. Premature senescence could arise if wood samples became waterlogged. It was concluded that time to failure was unsuitable as a metho...
P Vinden, J F Levy, D J Dickinson
Report of activity of CEN/TC 38: Test Methods for Wood Preservatives
1987 - IRG/WP 2287
G Castan
Durable fibre for durable MDF – testing Tricoya®
2015 - IRG/WP 15-40704
The chemical modification of wood has been a commercial reality for a decade on release of technologies for the modification of solid wood including Accoya®. A challenge and an opportunity for the modification technologies which typically impart dimensional stability, water stability and enhanced biological durability was the adaptation of the technology to wood based panels. This paper presents ...
E Suttie, J Alexander, M Maes
Evaluation of chlorpyrifos as an insecticidal component of a wood preservative
1984 - IRG/WP 3301
After two years of laboratory and field testing, chlorpyrifos is showing excellent potential as an insecticidal treatment to wood. In laboratory termite tests, retentions as low as 1-2 parts-per-million or approximately 0.0008 kg/m³ (0.00005 lbs/ft³) are effective against the Coptotermes formosanus. Laboratory leaching tests have shown no significant effect on the concentration of the retained c...
K Rose, J Kozuma, P Sparrow
European laboratory termite testing
1986 - IRG/WP 1299
As with all testing of wood preservatives the evaluation of the resistance to termites of treated wood requires methodology which is approriate to, and can be readily extrapolated to, the practical situation. Thus not only must the variations in possible treatment systems be taken into account (eg dip, brush or pressure application) so too must the range of termite species and the type of exposure...
R W Berry
Co-operative research project on L-joint testing. Progress report to March 1984
1984 - IRG/WP 2211
Each participant was intended to expose L-joints in the main trial on 1 April 1983 and the first sampling, after 8 months exposure, was to be undertaken on 1 December 1983. Some participants have had to vary this schedule. Results are presented from CTFT (France) and PRL (United Kingdom). These show a greater effectiveness by the double vacuum treatments compared with the 1 minute dip treatments. ...
J K Carey, A F Bravery
Fungus cellar and field tests with tall oil derivatives. Final report after 11 years' testing
1993 - IRG/WP 93-30007
Two derivatives of tall oil were tested as wood preservatives in a fungus cellar and in ground contact (field test). Stakes of Pinus sylvestris sapwood were used in the tests. For the field test the size of the stakes was 20 x 50 x 500 mm³ and for the fungus cellar test 20 x 20 x 250 mm³. The stakes were vacuum-pressure treated with the two products and exposed in 1981. The field test site used ...
J Jermer, Ö Bergman, T Nilsson