Raised beds made from pressure treated wood are fine and the fret over chemicals is costing people real money

Wesley Clark · 2026-09-17T08:40:05.506582+00:00

I built 6 raised beds out of pressure treated 2x10s back in 2019 and I have grown tomatoes, peppers, kale, and carrots in them every year since with zero issues. The whole panic about arsenic leaching into your soil comes from the old CCA treated wood that got pulled off the market in 2003, and people are still repeating it like it is current info. Modern pressure treated wood uses copper compounds, and study after study shows copper barely moves into the soil, and what does move stays right at the wood surface. I sent a soil sample to my county extension office in 2021, paid $25, and the copper level came back basically the same as my untreated control bed. Meanwhile I see folks on here dropping $400 on cedar or composite boards for the same footprint, or lining every board with plastic sheeting that just traps water and rots the wood faster. My beds are on year six, holding up fine, and I have maybe $140 total in lumber. If the chemical fear was real, my carrots would have shown it by now. Anyone actually got a soil test showing high copper or arsenic in a bed built after 2004, or is this just something we keep passing around?

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Raised beds made from pressure treated wood are fine and the fret over chemicals is costing people real money | Backyard Projects - Topic Shares