Certifications relating to emissions and indoor air quality
Emissions are volatile organic compounds released after processing a product. A familiar example is the way a new car smells. This odour is caused by emissions, which steadily diminish over time. The amount of emissions released depends on the quality of the product. The more emissions released, the more you are likely to experience undesirable effects, such as headaches. Since a lot of time is spent on a floor, it is important to keep these emissions to a minimum.
Unfortunately, there are still no European standards governing emissions. The Netherlands, for example, does not have a standard at all; some countries have drawn up their own standards, but their contents vary widely. Besides the different national standards, various voluntary standards have been developed in this area. All of these standards are assessed on the basis of standardised laboratory test methods.
The sheer quantity of these standards can make things quite confusing. For this reason, Eurofins – a prominent international test laboratory – has developed its own, more comprehensive ‘Indoor Air Quality’ standard. Eurofins has also expanded this standard to include the ‘Indoor Air Quality Gold Standard’, which involves testing an even wider range of substances and specifies lower emissions than any other national standard. Therefore, this standard more than matches all standards applicable inside and outside Europe. For example:
- Belgian VOC regulations
- German AgBB / AGB
- The French certification programme “Émissions dans l’air intérieur” (A+ certification) which awards a label for decor and furniture products based on tests for the emission of volatile organic compounds (VOCs).
Because mFLOR considers health and the environment supremely important, all our design floors have very low emission values. It’s no surprise, then, that all our products carry the Eurofins Indoor Air Certificate Gold, showing that our products more than meet the most stringent requirements.
