The hardwood flooring in the first floor of a house built in the 1960s was re-coated with an environmentally friendly “green” coating. The owners were asked to leave to a hotel for a week until the coating application was finished and had offgased its VOCs to a safe level. Unfortunately, as seen in the Figure below, this did not happen.
A safe concentration level of formaldehyde was only reached after about 6 months following the application of the floor coating. According to Health Canada, this level (TLV) is 40 ppb, 8-hour exposure, that results in critical respiratory symptoms in children. Fortunately, the offgasing happened during the warm months of the year, allowing the owners to open the windows as much as possible to keep the house ventilated. However, ventilation was not enough, and they had to stay in a hotel for much longer than one week…
We all like the smell of new stuff, without being aware that that with each breath, we breath in chemicals (VOCs).