Posted on 27th Jan 2025 @ 4:01 PM

In 2003, the European Union imposed restrictions on the sale and use of creosote, limiting its availability to professional users and banning its use in residential settings. These regulations aimed to reduce the potential risks associated with creosote exposure, particularly its carcinogenic properties.

Today, creosote is classified as a restricted substance in the UK, and its sale is heavily regulated. It is primarily available to professional users with the necessary permits and training. Retail sales to the general public are prohibited, and existing stocks are being phased out. The Health and Safety Executive (HSE) oversees the enforcement of these regulations to ensure compliance and protect public health.Despite these restrictions, creosote remains in use for specific applications where no suitable alternatives exist.

For instance, it is still permitted for use in certain industrial and agricultural settings, such as utility poles and fencing on farms. However, stringent safety measures must be followed to minimise exposure risks.In response to the restrictions on creosote, the market for wood preservatives has included the development of a range of modern wood preservatives that offer effective protection while minimising environmental and health risks. These alternatives are found in aqueous and oil-based treatments, which are advertised to provide long-lasting protection against rot, decay, and insect damage.Water-based preservatives, such as copper azole and alkaline copper quaternary (ACQ), are available for treating timber used in residential and commercial applications. 

Although these treatments penetrate the wood and form a protective barrier, helping prevent moisture ingress and fungal growth, none of them is as effective, as penetrative and long lasting as traditional creosote, traditionally prepared from distillation of naturally occurring, wood and coal tar compounds. Typically, the effectiveness of “Creosote substitutes” against fungal and floral growth on prepared timber appears to be around two to five years, whereas, for Creosote preparations, the period is typically between six and twenty years. To deny the use of Creosote is therefore to increase the use of labour, manufacturing energy, plastic packaging and distribution effort.There remain thus, very significant gains in “sustainability” and economics to be drawn from the continued, controlled use of Creosote.

Creosote is a mixture of many chemicals, including polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, which can be harmful to humans.
It is used as a wood preservative to protect outdoor wood products like utility poles and railroad ties from pests like termites, fungi, and mites.

Creosote is also an ingredient in “liquid smoke”, used for food preservation and flavouring and it has been traditionally used in OTC and prescription medicines sold against upper airway infections.During the ratification of the proposed, EU ban on Creosote, “several Member States (NL, D, DK and S) held the opinion that the level of protection for human health and the environment was insufficient and requested to maintain their more restrictive national legislations.

However, except The Netherlands, where a particulate geographic situation prevails, these Member States failed to submit any substantive evidence that the level of protection of the Community Directive was insufficient.” says the EU’s Environmental Risk advisory committee (https://ec.europa.eu/health/scientific_committees/environmental_risks/opinions/sctee/sct_out29_en.htm )
but neither does the EU advisory Committee provide any meaningful measurement, or evidence that Creosote ( various mixtures of around a hundred different, naturally found, organic chemicals) is carcinogenic, albeit is evident that some constituent chemicals promote “cancers”, dependent on a subject’s episodic exposure frequency, time of exposure, exposure concentration, method of entry and working environment.

One study of creosote-exposed wood impregnators in Sweden and Norway found that the risk of skin cancer was increased 2.37 times, Lip cancer risk about 2.5 time more likely and other cancers between 1.5 and 1.9 times more likely than in a standardised population. Another study found that the latency period from first exposure to diagnosis of squamous-cell carcinoma was a median of 28 years.If these measures are accurate, prevention of risky exposure is, of course, necessary and sensible in the context of standardised pathology. In the UK, melanoma is the fifth most common cancer, accounting for about 4% of new cancer cases and more cancer deaths than all other skin cancers combined.

There are about 17,500 new cases of melanoma each year. Incidence rates are highest in people aged 85 to 89 and in people aged 75 and over which, even accounting the claimed latency, would not suggest a significant cause of melanoma was induced from Creosote exposure. Also, the ratio of occurrence of the suspect cancers (49% female, 51% male) does not suggest influence by creosote exposure, since the vast majority of typically exposed workers is male.Geographical disease distribution rates for Melanoms, are significantly higher than the UK average in Wales and significantly lower than the UK average in Scotland and Northern Ireland.Since the 1841 inception of the Butler’s Tar Works and the constant use of Creosote since the late, Eighteenth Century, the vast majority of tar and creosote distillation took place in England.

This could be an indication that the high incidence in Wales, points to something other than Creosote being of major concern.Mortality rates in the UK suggest there are about 2,300 melanoma skin cancer deaths in the UK each year. Mortality rates are highest in people aged over ninety – again, well beyond the consideration of occupational exposure, accounting for latency. Also, the incidence of the disease is now 32% higher than was the case a decade ago (Cancer Research UK).Lip cancer association with Creosote, being greater, the disease deserves some consideratrion.Lip cancer incidence in Europe is around 12 per 100,000 people. In the UK, oral cancer is the ninth most common cancer, accounting for just over 2% of all cancers.Risk factors for lip cancer include:

• Tobacco use: Smoking, chewing tobacco, or using betel nut or paan 
• Alcohol consumption: Drinking a lot of alcohol 
• Sunlight exposure: Excessive exposure to ultraviolet (UV) light from the sun or sunbeds 
•Human papillomavirus (HPV): Infection with HPV can increase the risk of oropharyngeal cancer Other factors that may increase the risk of mouth cancer include: Having had cancer before and Having a weakened immune system (NHS UK)Although a study of 922 men who worked impregnating wood with creosote between 1950 and 1975 found an increased risk of lip cancer, the study period examined workers who had no adequate PPE, or such hygiene regimes as became prescribed after the Health and Safety at Work Act (1974).

The study's standardized incidence ratio (SIR) for lip cancer was 2.50. According to Cancer Research UK, habitual tobacco use (smoking) accounts for “causing” 17% of all oral cancers. Also, “drinking alcohol increases your risk of mouth and oropharyngeal cancer. It causes around 35 out of 100 (around 35%) of mouth cancers in the UK”. The lifetime risk of developing oral cancer is about 1 in 59 for men and 1 in 139 for women. Oral cancer is twice as common in men than women. (University of Glasgow research)8864 people in the UK were diagnosed with Mouth Cancer last year.

Last year, 3034 people in the UK lost their life to Mouth Cancer. Mouth Cancer appears twice as common in men than women, though an increasing number of women are being diagnosed with the disease. The primal reasons for this have been ascribed to smoking and drinking and the male incidence of the disease appears to have an incidence ratio, not significantly different to that reported in Sweden. The incidence of Mouth cancers in the UK have more than doubled since the regulation of Creosote.
(See also: Oral cancer in England A report on incidence, survival and mortality rates of oral cancer in England, 2012 to 2016 – Public Health England) 

In conclusion, there is no indication that the carcinogenic properties ascribed to cancer in the UK, bear any relation to occupational health and National Health statistics for exposed workers, which leads me to believe that present restrictions are based largely on supposition.