In article ,
"Mike" wrote:
"Sheldon" wrote in message
...
On Jun 9, 12:50?pm, Chris wrote:
On Jun 9, 1:12 pm, "SteveB" toquerville@zionvistas wrote:
I am looking for some old railroad ties. ?They have creosote treating on
them, but it is weak due to the age of the ties. ?Is this a problem when
using them to form raised beds?
Steve
--
"...the man who really counts in the world is the doer, not the mere
critic-the man who actually does the work, even if roughly and
imperfectly,
not the man who only talks or writes about how it ought to be done."
Theodore Roosevelt 1891
Wikipedia has this about coal tar creosote, the kind used to preserve
railroad ties:
"The International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) has determined
that coal tar creosote is probably carcinogenic to humans, based on
adequate animal evidence and limited human evidence. It is instructive
to note that the animal testing relied upon by IARC involved the
continuous application of creosote to the shaved skin of rodents.
After weeks of creosote application, the animals developed cancerous
skin lesions and in one test, lesions of the lung. The United States
Environmental Protection Agency has stated that coal tar creosote is a
possible human carcinogen."
Sounds like a problem to me.
Chris
Creosote occurs naturally every time wood burns; forest fires have
occured since well before there's been animal life on this planet and
still. Creosoted RR ties are essentially inert, that's how it
preserves wood... used for ground contact lumber to contain a
vegetable garden they are far safer to humans than living with the
creosote emited from a wood burning stove. Plants are very
discriminating, they don't absorb everything just because it's
there.
Oh, hell, I gotta couple of minutes to burn, so's here goes.
Creosote: a dark brown oil distilled from coal tar and used as a wood
preservative. It contains a number of phenols, cresols, and other
organic compounds.
€ a colorless, pungent, oily liquid, containing creosol and other
compounds, distilled from wood tar and used as an antiseptic.
Basically it is a family of phenols and polyphenols. The phenols
attack the amine portion in an amino-acid and that is important
because amino-acids are the building blocks of proteins. Proteins
are found in cell walls, enzymes, and muscles. Animal skins are
preserved with a form of polyphenol called tannin which renders
the hide toxic to micro-organisms that would like to degrade it.
Unlike tannin, which comes from the bark of oak trees, there is
no fixed provenance for creosote. It was never meant for ingestion,
so it isn't checked for contaminants. One thing is certain though,
it is used to kill micro-flora and fauna, such as one would find in
an organic garden.
So, if you are already growing your garden with Miracle Grow or some
other chemfert, then there is little to lose (plant wise) using
creosote. Human health wise, it is Russian roulette (but hey,
there's only one bullet).
No one says you had to be organic.
If the RR ties are reasonably sound I'd use them, if they are rotten
it really doesn't pay to use them to construct anything that one would
want to look decent and last a while. Real RR ties are very difficult
to work with even when new, they are typically not very consistantly
sized, and not very straight,
but mostly they are darn heavy, a ten
footer can easily weigh 300 pounds...
Where the **** do you come up with all this information Sheldon?
Oh wait your talking about 10 footers. thats about 230 pounds more than a
8 footer. Never mind
they were never meant to be used
as construction lumber... I'd not waste my time and energy
constructing a raised bed garden of any kind of rotten lumber.
--
Billy
Bush and Pelosi Behind Bars
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