Labeling of volatile organic compounds emissions from Chinese furniture: Consideration and practice

Abstract

Volatile organic compounds (VOCs) emitted from furniture are recognized as a main cause of bad indoor air quality. In European countries and the U.S., labeling systems for furniture have been established with good effect to address this issue. However, there are problems with these labeling systems. For example, too many VOCs were targeted, and the testing time was too long (7-28 d). Aiming at solving these problems, solutions are put forward to establish furniture VOCs emissions labeling system in China and some practices are introduced in this paper. They are: some furniture popular in the market were tested and main VOCs emitted from these furniture were identified; furniture loading factors in residential homes were surveyed, and reference bedroom and reference living room were established according to the survey results to make emission rate thresholds of furniture; C-history method was developed and applied to testing furniture which could shorten the testing time to 3 d; a reference toluene sample for assessing the precision of the test results of chamber system was prepared. These works are technically helpful for establishing furniture VOCs labeling system in China. © 2013 The Author(s).