Influence of Wooden Flooring on the Indoor Air Quality - Influence of Flooring Type

Due to new environmental trends and restrictions and due to more interest in using renewable materials with circularity, wood has become an important group of building materials. In Scandinavia, wood is a preferred building material where wooden laminates and parquet flooring are extremely popular in housing. Since wood contain terpene compounds and the flooring materials use a lot of adhesives to obtain different structures depending on if it is a parquet or a laminate flooring, it is of interest to investigate how such materials influence the indoor air quality (IAQ) and if the emitted compounds may contribute to health problems. In this study, primary emissions from several commercially available wooden flooring materials such as parquet and laminated flooring are presented. Since indoor air climate is very much dependent on the emission of volatile organic compounds from the building materials, we investigated such materials from the point of view of emission of volatile organic compounds and aldehydes. Since aldehydes are more toxic, it is of interest to review some of such data for aldehydes in this paper, which are necessary to obtain good indoor air quality. Health risks may mainly arise from the emission of terpene compounds and aldehydes from such flooring materials. According to international Occupational Exposure Limit levels (OEL), aldehydes are very hazardous for health at relatively low concentrations. They are also classified as human carcinogens according to EPA. Aldehydes are mainly formed from the oxidation of terpenes and from urea formaldehyde (UF) adhesives that are mainly present as adhesives in the flooring materials. In this paper I shall also review the standards that are used to approve such flooring products and the mechanisms behind the emission of aldehydes from UF adhesives. Our studies show that the levels of primary emissions are relatively high in such flooring materials and varies depending on if it is a parquet or laminate. These emissions may influence the indoor air quality and thereby may cause serious health problems. We have found that even an eco-labeled flooring material showed relatively high emission levels. This study reveals further that the standard used for the certification of building materials is not relevant to IAQ because they do not measure the total amount of free volatiles present in the flooring materials. The study reveals that to assure IAQ it is extremely important that the building materials are analyzed and specially when it concerns wooden materials.