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Formaldehyde Gas & Outgassing Hazards In Buildings InspectAPedia®  -     Table of sources of formaldehyde gas or odors in buildings Formaldehyde gas exposure limits How to reduce formaldehyde exposure levels in a building

Here we describe the health risks of exposure to formaldehyde gas in air or water, and we describe the proper steps to remove formaldehyde gas and formaldehyde gas emitting building products in order to improve indoor air quality in homes.This article includes excerpts or adaptations from Best Practices Guide to Residential Construction, by Steven Bliss, courtesy of Wiley & Sons. See ENVIRONMENTAL HAZARDS - INSPECT, TEST, REMEDY for our full list of environmental hazard identification and remedy related to buildings

© Copyright 2009 Daniel Friedman, Steve Bliss, Wiley & Sons, All Rights Reserved. Information Accuracy & Bias Pledge is at below-left. Use links at the left of each page to navigate this document or to view other topics at this website. Green links show where you are in our document or website.

A Guide to Reducing Exposure to Formaldehyde Hazards in Indoor Air

As detailed in Best Practices Guide to Residential Construction:

Formaldehyde is a ubiquitous volatile organic compound (VOC) that occurs in nature and is widely used in building products, finishes, and furnishings because of its desirable properties and low cost. Nearly all products made with formaldehyde outgas to some extent, but only a few contribute significantly to indoor air problems.

List of Sources of Formaldehyde Gas in Buildings

Formaldehyde is used to add permanent press qualities to clothing and drapes, as a preservative in many paints and coatings, and as the adhesive resin in some carpeting, fiberglass insulations, and pressed wood products. It is also a product of combustion found in tobacco smoke and the fumes from gas stoves and other unvented combustion.

Table 7-7 at left lists the Contributions of Formaldehyde to Room Air from various building materials and activities.

During the 1970s, it was used in urea-formaldehyde foam insulation (UFFI), which was blown into the walls of many homes in the U.S. and Canada and later banned after elevated levels of formaldehyde were found in a small number of homes. Testing has since shown that, in most cases, any excess formaldehyde was released within a few days of installation.

Nonetheless, the material was removed from a large number of homes and banned for several years in the United States and permanently banned in Canada. See Urea Formaldehyde Foam Insulation UFFI for details about UFFI insulation and formaldehyde concerns.

By far, the most significant source of formaldehyde in homes today is pressed wood products made with urea- formaldehyde resins. These include particle board, interior hardwood paneling, and medium-density fiberboard (MDF), which has the highest concentration of urea- formaldehyde of any pressed wood product. The relative contributions of new materials to a single room are shown in Table 7-7, above-left.

Formaldehyde is normally present at low levels, usually below 0.03 ppm both indoors and outdoors. However, buildings with high levels of pressed wood products can have higher indoor levels. For example, many manufactured homes have levels well above 0.03 ppm, due to their relatively small volume and large surface area of formaldehyde emitting materials.

HUD standards that limit the formaldehyde emissions of materials used in manufactured housing are designed to bring the ambient level to below 0.40 ppm, still over four times the 0.10 ppm limit recommended by most health and standards organizations, including ASHRAE and ANSI.

No standard exists for site- built homes. Health Effects. Sensitivity to formaldehyde varies widely. At levels between 0.40 and 3.0 ppm, most people experience watery eyes, burning sensations in the nose or throat, nausea, and difficulty breathing. Most people detect the chemical’s pungent odor at about 0.80 ppm, but many can smell it at concentrations as low as .05 ppm.

High concentrations of formaldehyde may trigger asthma attacks, and there is strong evidence that some people can develop a sensitivity to formaldehyde from exposure. Formaldehyde has been conclusively linked to nasal cancer in rats, while human studies have suggested a link to nose and throat cancer in humans, but are not conclusive. Based on the current evidence the EPA and the International Agency for Research in Cancer have consider formaldehyde a probable carcinogen prompting the lower workplace limits suggested by the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) (see the Formaldehyde Exposure Limits in Table 7-8 at left).

-- Adapted with permission from Best Practices Guide to Residential Construction.

Next, at Formaldehyde Gas Hazard Reduction we discuss how to remove, avoid, or eliminate indoor formaldehyde gas hazards.

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• Daniel Friedman - principal author/editor of the InspectAPedia^® Website
• Steven Bliss served as editorial director and co-publisher of The Journal of Light Construction for 16 years and previously as building technology editor for Progressive Builder and Solar Age magazines. He worked in the building trades as a carpenter and design/build contractor for more than ten years and holds a masters degree from the Harvard Graduate School of Education. Excerpts from his recent book, Best Practices Guide to Residential Construction, Wiley (November 18, 2005) ISBN-10: 0471648361, ISBN-13: 978-0471648369, appear throughout this website, with permission and courtesy of Wiley & Sons. Best Practices Guide is available from the publisher, J. Wiley & Sons, and also at Amazon.com.
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MOLD: A COMPLETE GUIDE TO MOLD
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INDOOR AIR QUALITY IMPROVEMENT GUIDE
  Health Effects of Air Pollutants
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  INDOOR AIR HAZARDS TABLE
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INDOOR AIR QUALITY METHODS COMPARED
LEAD POISONING HAZARDS GUIDE
MOISTURE CONTROL in BUILDINGS
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MOLD ATLAS & PARTICLES INDEX
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MOLD CLEANUP GUIDE- HOW TO GET RID OF MOLD
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ODORS, Smells, Gases in Buildings-Diagnosis & Cure
RENTERS & TENANTS GUIDE TO MOLD
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• Best Practices Guide to Residential Construction, by Steven Bliss. John Wiley & Sons, 2006. ISBN-10: 0471648361, ISBN-13: 978-0471648369, Hardcover: 320 pages, available from Wiley.com and also at Amazon.com. See our book review of this publication

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