Outgassing
Last Updated on Tuesday, 26 May 2015 01:55 Written by Albert Greenhut Tuesday, 10 March 2015 07:22
On March 1st 60 Minutes ran a report on Lumber Liquidators laminated flooring that outgasses formaldehyde at levels that exceed California Air Resources Board acceptable limits, which were adopted by congress in the Formaldehyde Standards Act of 2010 (which will take effect across the country this year). The problem is not that formaldehyde is used during production of flooring, but the levels at which it is used by factories is unacceptable and has resulted in the flooring outgassing at levels significantly higher than it should be, and this flooring is now in thousands of homes.
Producing this flooring requires formaldehyde to bind together wood particles in the core boards of the flooring. The factories where the flooring is being manufactured are being produced are supposed to, and are capable of producing materials that comply with these standards, but are not.
Products that rely on chemicals, in this case as a binding agent, carry an inherent risk of outgassing. In controlled amounts this can be harmless, but quality control of these amounts carries high costs, as Lumber Liquidators is seeing as investigations continue.
Some methods of preservation rely on keeping the outside environment, aka pollutants, out (namely hermetic sealing). This method does not account for chemicals that can be emitted (outgassed) by the product that the preservation product is supposed to be protecting.
Intercept Technology is based on a reactive process of preservation that prevents outside pollutants from entering the package as well as actively reacts with pollutants that are inside of the package to keep the environment inert. This means that not only are the contaminating gasses inside the pack at the time of wrapping reacted away but over time, as the product may emit gasses (outgas), the technology continues to work and clean the environment inside of the package providing continued protection. We took the technology one step farther when we developed the RIBS Technology, which added in another layer behind the Intercept layer. The Intercept materials react with and permanently neutralize reactant gases in the air, however the layer behind the Intercept absorbs the organic gases, like Formaldehyde, that the Intercept layer does not react with.
Consumers are protected from pollution but sometimes products need to be protected from themselves. Intercept Technology provides a reactive defense against atmospheric pollution from the outside atmosphere as well as pollutants or chemicals that outgas from the product.
Intercept Technology… Simply better protection.
