I was not aware of the medical connection to this tree when I cut down six 4” Tree of Heaven in my yard with a chainsaw and then chopped all the pieces into 5’ or shorter sections and threw them into the woods. I wore gloves and long sleeves/pants, but I developed heart attack like symptoms over the next 2 weeks that led to a lot of testing over the next 2 months. The doctors could not figure out the cause and it cost me about $12K in out of pocket expense, including a cardio catheterization. The symptoms eventually passed and no heart disease was found. I guess the symptoms from the tree sap passed by the time I completed the testing. It wasn’t until a year later that my wife saw a mention of the connection between the tree of heaven and myocarditis.
I recommend caution in handling any part of this tree. The sap, bark, leaves, and wood dust are connected with severe lung irritation, skin rash, and myocarditis in humans and animals.

I have a recipe that kills them easily. You’ll need: diesel and two herbicides “Triclopyr 4” and “Crossroads” Mix 8 oz of tric4 to 4 oz of crossroads to 116 oz of diesel (this ends up as exactly 1 gallon). You can just start with 1 gallon of diesel, add the herbicide then add diesel till it’s a gallon.

Now you take that and soak the tree bark and any exposed roots you can see. Be liberal with it, soak it till it’s running down to the base of the tree. For small trees (6″ diameter or smaller, soak 18-24″ and down. For larger trees, soak higher. The bigger the tree, the higher you go. If it’s massive, give ir a day or three and soak it again.

Don’t do anything else to the tree. Don’t hack it, don’t cut it. Don’t even say anything mean to it. By the time the tree realizes what has happened, it’s too late.

The best time to do this in the late fall through late winter. Like November -Feb.

If you get any resprouts at all, you won’t get man and most of those will die on their own given time. To give you an idea, we treated 50 acres of ailanthus infestation last winter using this method and during the inspection in june, we found like 5 resprouts TOTAL and they were already dying.

We had a 64 year old ailanthus altissima in our yard that we cut down. It was roughly 40 feet tall and it overshadowed half of our 75′ x 45′ yard. It was impossible to grow anything other than grape hyacinths near that tree’s roots. I had the arborists leave some of the logs and a cross-section of the trunk with me when they cut down the tree. Wish I had gotten to do more with it. I’m certain I didn’t allow it to air dry properly, given that it was my very first attempt at working with wood, but I noticed that elm seed beetles absolutely loved burrowing under the bark around the logs. They appeared to have utilized that as a place to grow. I also found a specific type of mushroom growing on the dead wood of some of my ailanthus stumps. I don’t know what kind of mushroom it was though.

They’ve made it up to New Hampshire. I cleared some out with a group, and after cutting them down, we either burned or painted herbicide around the stumps.

i agree i work in a wood shop and its a very nice wood to work with.

I’ve harvested one of these trees in the past and debarked it and the sap had no ill effects on me. Working the wood had no ill effects on me as well. It’s quite a nice wood to work with in my opinion.