Word: lumber
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 2000-2009
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...night, the hazy roadside darkness is broken by a fluorescent-lit restaurant, its plastic tables and chairs idle; by an illuminated badminton court, its lines drawn in the dirt, its players immaculate in their whites; by an overturned lumber truck, its wheels still spinning. And finally, having finished a bag of snakefruit bought on the Dumai docks, I reach Medan, a typically crowded and polluted Indonesian city in a region that was the Deli Sultanate when the lofty sails of Zheng He's fleets darkened these skies...
...there's one thing wood knows how to do, it's rot. Expose lumber to the elements, and within as few as five years, sun, rain, termites and fungus can reduce it to pulp. That's why builders were so enthusiastic in the 1970s when the lumber industry introduced pressure-treated boards--ordinary planks and posts injected with an extraordinary preservative known as CCA that can extend the life of wood fivefold, eliminating repairs and saving millions of trees annually. What got less attention at the time is the fact that CCA stands for chromated copper arsenate--a form...
Most parents know little about the threat of poison in playgrounds, but in government circles, the alarm bells being sounded by consumer groups have reached the point where officials feel they have to act. Last week the Environmental Protection Agency announced that starting in the fall, CCA-treated lumber sold in the U.S. will contain a warning label, and stores will be provided with stickers and signs for their displays. At the same time, the Consumer Product Safety Commission agreed to ask for public comments on petitions that could lead to an outright ban of CCA. In Florida, dozens...
...taken a far more lax approach. In 1987, California passed a law requiring CCA-treated structures to be coated with paint or sealant every two years. The EPA set guidelines of its own, establishing a program under which woodmakers would provide a warning sheet with each package of treated lumber shipped to retailers. But critics charge that the California law has been largely ignored and point out that the EPA program is strictly voluntary. Even when suppliers provide warnings, retailers may simply discard them with packing material before customers ever see them...
...variations of a standard hull, Gdynia designs from scratch and works closely with clients to add special features that they want. The blueprint that won the Weyerhaeuser contract is a gantry-crane "open hatch" design that many shipyards simply weren't equipped to produce. The ships will carry lumber and paper to the Far East and return filled with cars, snowmobiles and industrial equipment. The built-in retractable cranes will allow the ships to load and unload quickly, even at ports with inferior or damaged equipment. Other design elements will make the ships sail faster than most, in part...