Let's Not Talk About Arsenic [1]
Submitted by Sheldon Rampton [2] on
Newspapers in the suburbs of Washington, D.C., and Boston, including chains owned by the publishers of The Wall Street Journal and the Boston Herald, are refusing to carry a paid advertisement criticizing retail giant Home Depot for selling lumber treated with dangerous amounts of arsenic, according to a news release from the Healthy Building Network [3] and the Environmental Working Group. The ad timed to run as the two groups released a report that found that one in 500 children who play regularly on playground equipment or decks made from arsenic-treated wood can be expected to develop cancer later in life as a result of this exposure. "Home Depot spends millions of dollars each year advertising its products, including arsenic-treated wood, and some of those ads specifically claim that arsenic-treated wood is safe," said Bill Walsh, director of Healthy Building Network. "For these newspapers to run whole sections of Home Depot's ads, then refuse to sell us less than a page of space denies their readers access to balanced information about a very real threat to their kids' health."