Contamination of the environment by waste CCA (Cu, Cr, As) wood, containing the toxic heavy metals, copper, chromium, and arsenic that are hazardous to human health, can be significantly reduced by supercritical fluid extraction (SFE) technology. An environmentally benign solution for the detoxification of these CCA woods is the use of SFE technology for the treatment because no extra pollutant is added. In this work, we studied SFE of Cu, Cr, and As from CCA wood by using supercritical CO2 modified with chelating agents. Effects of pressure and temperature on the extraction efficiency for the heavy metals were studied with organophosphorous chelating agent, Cyanex 302. Some other chelating agents were also compared. Cyanex 302 was the best ligand in our experiments at pressure of 24 MPa and temperature of 333 K. The extraction efficiencies for Cu, Cr, and As were up to 63.5, 28.6, and 31.3%, respectively. (C) 2003 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.