Formaldehyde is considered as carcinogenic and is emitted from particleboards and plywood used in toy manufacturing. Currently, the flask method is frequently used in Europe for market surveillance purposes to assess formaldehyde release from toys, but its concordance to levels measured in emission test chambers is poor. Surveillance laboratories are unable to afford laborious and expensive emission chamber testing to comply with a new amendment of the European Toy Directive; they need an alternative method that can provide reliable results. Therefore, the application of miniaturised emission test chambers was tested. Comparisons between a 1 m3 emission test chamber and 44 mL microchambers with two particleboards over 28 days and between a 24 L desiccator chamber and the microchambers with three puzzle samples over 10 days resulted in a correlation coefficient r2 of 0.834 for formaldehyde at steady state. The correlation between the results obtained in microchambers vs. flask showed a high variability over 10 samples (r2: 0.145), thereby demonstrating the error-proneness of the flask method in comparison to methods carried out under ambient parameters. An exposure assessment was also performed for three toy puzzles: indoor formaldehyde concentrations caused by puzzles were not negligible (up to 8 µg/m3), especially when more conservative exposure scenarios were considered.

There has been an increasing use of oriented strand boards (OSBs) for the construction of floors, ceilings and walls of buildings. In Germany and other European countries, OSBs are mainly produced from pine wood ( Pinus sylvestris). In response to complaints about the odour and irritation of mucous membranes in connection with the use of OSBs, samples of OSBs were bought from do-it-yourself stores to test their volatile organic compound (VOC) emissions by using emission test chambers. The boards emitted predominantly monoterpenes, aldehydes, acids and acetone. Aldehydes are generated during the production process by the oxidation of unsaturated fatty acids such as linoleic acid. Pine wood, compared with other wood species, contains more unsaturated fatty acids. Of the six acquired OSBs, four boards from three manufacturers would not meet the requirements of the German AgBB (Ausschuss zur gesundheitlichen Bewertung von Bauprodukten, Committee for Health Evaluation of Building Products), mainly because of the emissions of unsaturated aldehydes. These compounds have low LCI values (lowest concentration of interest) and are therefore problematic substances based on a health-related evaluation of building products according to the AgBB scheme.

KurzfassungVor dem Hintergrund der notwendigen Revision der Kriterien zur Vergabe des Gütezeichens „Blauer Engel“ für Laserdrucker, Kopierer und Multifunktionsgeräte mussten auch die Prüfmethoden angepasst werden, da die alten Verfahren nicht mehr die heutigen Anforderungen an Emissionsmessungen erfüllen. In diesem Zusammenhang wurde auch das unterschiedliche Emissionsverhalten von Hardcopy-Geräten auf Grund der verschiedenen und nicht miteinander vergleichbaren Prüfverfahren heftig diskutiert. Aus diesen Gründen wurde ein neues Prüfverfahren entwickelt, mit dem eine verlässliche und reproduzierbare Prüfung der Emissionsraten von Staub, Ozon und flüchtigen organischen Verbindungen auf der Basis des ECMA (European Computer Manufacturer Association) Standards 328 möglich ist. Dazu wurden neun verschiedene Geräte unter verschiedenen Bedingungen untersucht. Als ein Ergebnis dieser Studie wurden neue Kriterien zur Vergabe des „Blauen Engels“ für Kopierer, Drucker und Multifunktionsgeräte festgelegt.