Indoor Air Conference 2008 - progress

Indoor Air 2008
The 11th International Conference on Indoor Air Quality and Climate
17th August to 22nd August 2008 in Copenhagen

Some developments regarding VOC (volatile organic compounds) and formaldehyde product emissions into indoor air, seen with the eyes of Eurofins:

  1. The number of emission rating systems is growing continuously.

  2. Some European labels are trying to use comparable testing protocols while no harmonisation is occurring within the US and Asia. This is limiting the quality of information behind the statement of compliance with a limit value if different testing protocols have been used.

  3. Reapeatability of emission test results with same material from lab to lab is limited, both due to material inhomogeneity and because of differences in laboratory procedures. Some progress was made within Europe during last years. Reliability (testing quality, traceability, and inter-lab repeatability) will be one of the major issues of product emissions testing in the near future.

  4. Clients always should ask how their testing lab performed in recent round-robin tests. Some major players in the US and in Asia are not used to compare their performance in round-robin tests. For that reason, no one is able to prove the reliability of results delivered by these laboratories. Eurofins quality policy with emission testing is described in a flyer in English, in French and in German. 

  5. Both comparability of testing protocols and repeatability between testing labs could be improved if all involved parties were ready to do so, and if they were communicating much more than today. In Europe, a new CEN standard will bring some progress in 2009 or 2010. A small group of experts is trying to define a pan-European low-emissions label with harmonised limit values, but the majority of European labels is not involved in this exercise. Progress on harmonisation could save a lot of costs with the same output of information. Some tests may be combined already today into one test set-up, but there are still too many differences between the testing methods than we could run just one test for all purposes.

  6. In the US, search for a reference material for emission chamber testing is under development.  This promises to facilitate harmonised calibration and quantification of emission testing.

  7. A number of presentations claimed that SVOC (semi-volatile organic compounds) should have more attention and need to be measured. - SVOC will remain in indoor air a longer time than VOC due to their low volatility, but for the same reason their concentration in indoor air will be much lower. This holds true even if you consider that some SVOC will be adsorbed at house dust and then inhaled with dispersed dust. Therefore it may be questioned whether monitoring of SVOC really is meaningful, with the exception of a small number of very toxic SVOC's.

Eurofins contributions:

Indoor Air 2008 NeuhausIndoor Air 2008 Oppl