copy_term is slow

I observe that copying 100 terms costs .35s execution time which is 30% 
of the total of a rather large program.  The terms being copied look like this:

eqcon(poly([-1*A,1*B],0))-[item(324)=A,item(377)=B]


Based on documenation, I suspect A and B are attributed variables, but in 
this case I don't want the attributes copied.  What can I do?
 
Alan Baljeu
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