Formaldehyde, Itlas chooses CARB-certified panels for all its floors
As of 1 June 2018, regulations on formaldehyde emissions from wood composite products came into force in the United States of America.
The EPA - Environment Protection Agency, the federal government's agency for the protection of the environment and human health - has decided to adopt the formaldehyde emission limits set by the California Air Resources Board ( CARB). This decision means that all manufacturers, importers, distributors and processors of panels must comply with even stricter limits than previously required.
In the case of pre-finished wood flooring, the plywood panels that form the substrate of the product under the noble layer must have an emission limit of 0.05 parts per million. Not only that. The panel must be CARB-certified and its procurement by the processor must be registered and labelled.
This is a rule that today only applies to exports to the US market. But Itlas, which has always been particularly attentive to environmental policy and the pursuit of new goals to improve its products also and above all in terms of protecting human health, has already chosen to go further, purchasing only CARB-certified plywood panels for the production of all the company's pre-finished wood flooring projects. Not only those to be placed on the US market.
A choice that improves on the guarantees already offered until now to those who purchase a wooden floor by Itlas, which for years now has been in Class A+ of the French Label certification, according to Decree no. 2011-321 of 23 March 2011 of the French Ministry of Ecology, Sustainable Development, Transport and Housing.
The classes range from A+ to C and are measured on the basis of the results of product analyses, in which the presence of ten substances is sought: formaldehyde, acetaldehyde, toluene, tetrachloroethylene, xylene, trimethylbenzene, dichlorobenzene, ethylbenzene, butoxyethanol the sum of the values of these ten substances constitutes the TVOC (Total Volatile Organic Compounds).
