Ah, here's something I know too much about and every day try to forget more and more! Before I go on, recycling poles is so cool, I wish those who do were near, I'd buy the beers and lunch for being so environmentally right on!

Poles are generally treated with cresote in several ways:

1. Butt soak. This was an old method that has went by the wayside quite some time ago. The idea was that poles were placed or lowered and lifted into a "cresote pit" and additional cresote added to keep the level up to the desired height on the pole. (and there are thousands of local clean-up for cresote pits thoughtout the US and Canada). This is the best stuff to recycle! Old, clear, really fantastic wood can be found in this! What's really neat is that little of the wood was actually treated, and the these poles are replaced by the nasty stuff.

2. Pole soak: the entire pole is laid in long pits and cresote added as needed. The poles are rolled then lifted out onto cross-stacks. This was something done from the late forties through the sixties.

3. Pressure treated poles. The current practice diue to environmental laws. Poles are placed in a chamber and cresote and pentachlorphenol is pushed under pressure into the wood a bit further then soaks.

What cresote is:

Cresote is a somewhat refined fluid derived from coal tar. It is a mix of chlorinated hydrocarbons, long-chain alkanes and alkynes, a mess of aromatics, asphaltic tars containing heavy metals from tank-bottoms and other bad stuff that was tossed in when no other disposal method was available. Heavy metal compounds were added like metal finishing wastes, too. Cresote pits were a disposal method as well as a treatment location. The stuff is nasty; a biocide to say the least, and many compounds in it are serious health threats when fresh and more prevalent. Once it is in the wood, it becomes somewhat fixed and is substantially less a threat per se. However, the treated wood pieces, and the SAWDUST is a real threat to the environment by exposing more surface area for leaching. Collect and bag and put into the trash for disposal to the (lined) municipal landfill. I should caution everyone in the US that the finely divided sawdust is actually either a designated hazardous waste or more likely a hazardous waste. That said, all municipal landfills are all lined with a leachate collection removal system in place (RCRA Subpart C and D). Since I'm not a bureaucrat any longer enforcing such things, the environmentally best place for disposal is the landfill! Ultimately, the facultative gram negative bacteria like pseudomonas and gas producing anaerobes will break the compounds down.

Other treated woods:
Chromated copper arsenide: That light green haze on woods with the systematic penetrations on the wood surfaces is a chromated copper arsenide. The chromates have a high fraction of chrome 6 or hexavalent chrome, a carcinogen among other things. The copper is toxic to aquatic plants and many animals. The arsenide is arsenic, a nasty heavy metal. Avoid this stuff.
Pentachlorphenol: a solution that is toxic to all life it is commonly used in poles and boards for decay resistance.

A good link for a nontechnical review of treated wood is found here:
http://ceinfo.unh.edu/common/documents/chemtrtw.htm

: Are tele poles not impregnated with cresote? Or are they just coated on
: the outside leaving the inside untouched? I only ask because I have a 10'
: section of a brand new pole only mine is spruce. Maybe I could do
: something with it.

If you carefully cut it into a sqaure cross section, you can remove most of the treated wood except for the cracks which provided channels for penetration. You can work around this though. Is that sitka spruce by any chance?