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The latest version of the German AgBB evaluation scheme (2015) for construction products includes some VVOC, e.g. formaldehyde, acetaldehyde and acetone. For these VVOC so-called LCI values (lowest concentration of interest) were derived which are used for the calculation of the so-called R-value (risk index, see reference 1 for the calculation). Test chamber measurements of particle boards show that the emissions of VVOC might have significant impact on the R-value and therefore for the health evaluation.
Wood-based materials are well-known sources for formaldehyde emission in the indoor environment. Different testing standards lead to different emission values for the materials. Such standards are compared in this study. Besides scenarios with varying loading factors, air exchange rates and climatic conditions were investigated to evaluate the formaldehyde emission potential of different building products.
Under realistic indoor conditions used for the emission chamber tests, exceeding of formaldehyde indoor guide values were obtained. Results showed the need for improvement of wood-based materials with lower formaldehyde emissions and the adaption of testing parameters closer to realistic conditions.
Formaldehyde is considered as carcinogenic and is emitted from particleboards and plywood used in toy manufacturing. Currently, the flask method is frequently used in Europe for market surveillance purposes to assess formaldehyde release from toys, but its concordance to levels measured in emission test chambers is poor. Surveillance laboratories are unable to afford laborious and expensive emission chamber testing to comply with a new amendment of the European Toy Directive; they need an alternative method that can provide reliable results. Therefore, the application of miniaturised emission test chambers was tested. Comparisons between a 1 m3 emission test chamber and 44 mL microchambers with two particleboards over 28 days and between a 24 L desiccator chamber and the microchambers with three puzzle samples over 10 days resulted in a correlation coefficient r2 of 0.834 for formaldehyde at steady state. The correlation between the results obtained in microchambers vs. flask showed a high variability over 10 samples (r2: 0.145), thereby demonstrating the error-proneness of the flask method in comparison to methods carried out under ambient parameters. An exposure assessment was also performed for three toy puzzles: indoor formaldehyde concentrations caused by puzzles were not negligible (up to 8 μg/m3), especially when more conservative exposure scenarios were considered.