Creosote: Proven Critical Infrastructure

Creosote-treated wood products have made a valuable contribution to the nation’s transportation, communications, energy, and maritime infrastructures for more than a century. Today’s railway ties, utility poles, and marine pilings continue to be protected with coal tar creosote from insect infestation and microbial decay.

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Welcome to the Creosote Council

Creosote wood preservative is integral to the nation’s transportation, communications, energy, and maritime infrastructures for more than a century. Today’s railway ties, utility poles, and marine pilings are protected with creosote from insect infestation and decay. In terms of performance and cost, coal tar creosote-treated wood products deliver benefits that cannot be matched by substitutes.

About Creosote Council

Video: Creosote-Treated Wood Products

This video explains creosote’s contribution to the longevity of wood products, its many uses, its treatments processes, and more.

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Creosote's Role in Critical Infrastructure

Creosote-treated industrial wood products are long-lasting — railroad crossties, bridge timbers, utility poles, foundation piling, and more.

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A Cost-Benefit Analysis of Creosote-Treated Wood

Wood treated with coal tar creosote is regarded as a cost-effective material with economic advantages over non-treated wood materials.

The Proper Use of Creosote When Pressure Treating Wood

Wood preservatives such as creosote are regulated by EPA as pesticides under the Federal Insecticide, Fungicide, and Rodenticide Act (FIFRA). Creosote has been continuously registered under FIFRA for more than 75 years. Under EPA’s “treated articles exemption,” treated wood itself is exempt from FIFRA regulation.

The primary purpose of the Creosote Council is to represent its members in connection with federal and state creosote-related regulatory activities. This includes generation of EPA-required worker safety and environmental data, and updating of creosote product labeling, for continued registration of creosote as a wood preservative for pressure treatment applications.

View our Presentation on the Proper Use of Creosote When Pressure Treating Wood

Learn More About Creosote in Society

Creosote History

Origins protecting ships’ wood from decay

Creosote Regulation

Regulated as a pesticide by EPA under FIFRA

Creosote Research

Science, Environment, Health

Timeline: A History of Creosote Wood Preservation

Learn more about the history of wood preservation and creosote wood treatment, from the Napoleonic Wars and the Industrial Revolution to the expansion of infrastructure in the American economy.

Creosote Wood Treatment Timeline

Members of the Creosote Council

Wood Preservative Regulation: Scope and Application of the FIFRA Treated Articles Exemption

The paper discusses the U.S. Environmental Agency’s potential improper expansion of its authority under the Federal Insecticide, Fungicide, and Rodenticide Act (FIFRA), the federal pesticide statute, to regulate not only the registration, labeling, and use of wood preservatives, but also treated wood products.