A review on natural products as wood protectant

Traditional wood protection methods employ chemicals that are considered toxic and can adversely affect human health and the environment. Fortunately, serious efforts are being made globally to develop alternative protection methods based on natural products with little or no toxicity, but the progress in implementation of the technologies has been slow because of certain limitations, including discrepancies between laboratory and field performance of natural products, variability in their efficacy related to exposure/environmental conditions, and legislation difficulties due to disagreements globally on setting standards defining the quality of their performance and use. The focus of this review is to present information on the natural compounds that have shown promise for wood protection, and the information is presented under defined interactive categories. In closing, some thoughts are presented on potential use of rapidly evolving technologies, such as nano- and gene-technologies that can lead to significant advances, particularly from the consideration of specificity of natural products and their economic value.