Why do you harp on Indoor Air Quality Certifications?
Q. If cork flooring is a natural material, why do you put so much emphasis on whether the manufacturer has gotten the flooring certified through chemical emissions testing?
A. There are many natural flooring products on the market. But very few of them are made without chemicals and additives. Cork flooring is beautifully natural and sustainable. But it cannot be made without some extra ingredients – like adhesive.
After wine bottle stoppers are punched out of the bark of the Cork Oak Trees in and around Portugal, cork that will be made into flooring is ground up, mixed with pigments, and adhesive. Fortunately, cork producers in the Mediterranean region are known for their attention to environmentally sound adhesives and additives.
Once the sheets of cork are produced, more materials are introduced. If the cork will be used for engineered flooring, which is made in layers, the core of the floor with be HDF (High Density Fiber Board). And if the flooring – engineered or solid –
will be prefinished, anything from a simple water-based polyurethane to a proprietary aluminum oxide or ceramic finish, to a high-tech nano finish, will be applied to the surface.
We once said what could be more natural and less toxic than a tile floor? It is baked dirt, after all, fired at temperatures exceeding 2,000 degrees Fahrenheit. Surely, this heat would burn off organics present in clay or binders, resulting in a product that emits no VOCs (Volatile Organic Compounds).
Well, as with all green interior products these days, more and more people are saying, “prove it.”
That’s why there is an indoor-air quality certification requirement within the Green Squared Certification, an ANSI (American National Standards Institute) standard that recently has gone into use for tile manufacturers.
“The concern is anything added to the product after firing,” says Ryan Marino, standards development officer for the Tile Council of North America.
