5 ms·

Not particle board (as mentioned in the article) but sheets of inexpensive Chinese plywood I picked up had a very strong formaldehyde smell. I had never smelled

Not particle board (as mentioned in the article) but sheets of inexpensive Chinese plywood I picked up had a very strong formaldehyde smell. I had never smelled that in plywood before (or at least so strongly). I've sworn off particle board in my shop decades ago (for reasons having nothing to do with formaldehyde) but quickly added cheap Chinese plywood to the exclusion list. I have resigned myself to opening my wallet for the expensive stuff (that costs over $100 for a 4' x 8' sheet, Europly, etc.). Europly at least seems to be formaldehyde free.

malfist 2y ago
You sparked my interest so I looked it up. Plywood in the US comes predominantly from China and Vietnam. I'm surprised I figured due to it's size and density it'd be mostly a local product
- lazide 2y ago
  The ones I saw at local stores were all from Canada or US West. Do you have a link to the data?
  - forgetfreeman 2y ago
    Table on page 9 suggests the US imports just under a quarter of consumed sheet products like plywood and OSB. https://unece.org/sites/default/files/2023-11/US_FPMAR_2023-2024_Nov3.pdf https://unece.org/sites/default/files/2023-11/US_FPMAR_2023-...
bottom999mottob 2y ago
When we ripped out the carpet to install luxury vinyl flooring it was off-gassing for weeks. Had to go over the vinyl with dozens of microfiber clothes before the outside coating stopped wiping off. Imagine all of the people cutting into that inexpensive wood without air filtration is terrifying
- ta988 2y ago
  Look up what happens to all the workers cutting those famous rock countertops that are so much loved...
  - asdff 2y ago
    Well that was mainly for the workers who weren’t wearing their ppe which turned out to be a lot in that industry. PPE is important and not lame folks.
- pfannkuchen 2y ago
  What is luxury vinyl like? I can’t imagine vinyl being luxurious, but my personal taste is fairly hippy slanted so I tend to just ignore synthetic materials for anything pricey.
  - majormajor 2y ago
    It's not "actually luxurious" so much as "it looks a lot less bad than old linoleum rolls" while still having high durability. Like how every new apartment is "luxury."
    - lostlogin 2y ago
      Actual linoleum is pretty neat and self healing to a degree. It’s also very heavy and very expensive. It’s the plastic stuff that is a bit nasty.
  - positr0n 2y ago
    Depends on how much you spend in it. And especially how much you spend in the underlayment for how it feels under your feet. Even in expensive homes in my area it's common because it has a lot of nice properties. Homeowners will pay $15/sq ft, which at that price you could get a real wood floor installed, for LVP that looks pretty realistic, is easy on your joints due to the nice underlayment, and is basically as indestructible as a tile floor.
billfruit 2y ago
What about fabric/clothing, where formaldehyde seems to be used as a type of finishing agent.
whizzter 2y ago
There's laws at least in Sweden(and new EU directives incoming that might tighten them up even more) that forbids selling plywood with offgassing higher than a certain level, so it's probably not totally free of it but should be within safe levels.
- kemaru 2y ago
  The problem with the current EU-wide rating system is that it assumes the interior is ventilated as required by other regulations. Furniture materials are assigned an emission class (E0, E1, E2) based on the steady-state VOC concentration in the test chamber (EN 717-1 and others). Virtually no home manages to hit the minimums for ventilation (25 m³/h per person, IIRC), especially during winter. So even though an E1-class particle board is labeled as safe with regards to VOC emissions, in practice the room will reach far higher pollution levels than that category allows. It also doesn't control for the amount of material present, so you can have a small properly ventilated room covered floor to ceiling with E1 particle board furniture, but achieve E2 or worse VOC levels in the air. Backstory: former employer spent $$ to integrate a VOC sensor into their residential HVAC/HRV solution. The idea was to increase ventilation when odors are present and reduce ventilation when the air was clean again. The engineer prototyped and tested the device in their pre-war home (brick, stone, old wood). All good. They had the first batch manufactured and sent out to customers in brand new homes full of modern materials (engineered wood, vinyl flooring etc). The sensors were permanently saturated (reading maximum VOC value) and the project ended up being canceled, because newly built homes were their entire customer base.

malfist 2y ago

You sparked my interest so I looked it up. Plywood in the US comes predominantly from China and Vietnam. I'm surprised I figured due to it's size and density it'd be mostly a local product

lazide 2y ago
The ones I saw at local stores were all from Canada or US West. Do you have a link to the data?
- forgetfreeman 2y ago
  Table on page 9 suggests the US imports just under a quarter of consumed sheet products like plywood and OSB. https://unece.org/sites/default/files/2023-11/US_FPMAR_2023-2024_Nov3.pdf https://unece.org/sites/default/files/2023-11/US_FPMAR_2023-...

bottom999mottob 2y ago

When we ripped out the carpet to install luxury vinyl flooring it was off-gassing for weeks. Had to go over the vinyl with dozens of microfiber clothes before the outside coating stopped wiping off. Imagine all of the people cutting into that inexpensive wood without air filtration is terrifying

ta988 2y ago
Look up what happens to all the workers cutting those famous rock countertops that are so much loved...
- asdff 2y ago
  Well that was mainly for the workers who weren’t wearing their ppe which turned out to be a lot in that industry. PPE is important and not lame folks.
pfannkuchen 2y ago
What is luxury vinyl like? I can’t imagine vinyl being luxurious, but my personal taste is fairly hippy slanted so I tend to just ignore synthetic materials for anything pricey.
- majormajor 2y ago
  It's not "actually luxurious" so much as "it looks a lot less bad than old linoleum rolls" while still having high durability. Like how every new apartment is "luxury."
  - lostlogin 2y ago
    Actual linoleum is pretty neat and self healing to a degree. It’s also very heavy and very expensive. It’s the plastic stuff that is a bit nasty.
- positr0n 2y ago
  Depends on how much you spend in it. And especially how much you spend in the underlayment for how it feels under your feet. Even in expensive homes in my area it's common because it has a lot of nice properties. Homeowners will pay $15/sq ft, which at that price you could get a real wood floor installed, for LVP that looks pretty realistic, is easy on your joints due to the nice underlayment, and is basically as indestructible as a tile floor.

billfruit 2y ago

What about fabric/clothing, where formaldehyde seems to be used as a type of finishing agent.

whizzter 2y ago

There's laws at least in Sweden(and new EU directives incoming that might tighten them up even more) that forbids selling plywood with offgassing higher than a certain level, so it's probably not totally free of it but should be within safe levels.

kemaru 2y ago
The problem with the current EU-wide rating system is that it assumes the interior is ventilated as required by other regulations. Furniture materials are assigned an emission class (E0, E1, E2) based on the steady-state VOC concentration in the test chamber (EN 717-1 and others). Virtually no home manages to hit the minimums for ventilation (25 m³/h per person, IIRC), especially during winter. So even though an E1-class particle board is labeled as safe with regards to VOC emissions, in practice the room will reach far higher pollution levels than that category allows. It also doesn't control for the amount of material present, so you can have a small properly ventilated room covered floor to ceiling with E1 particle board furniture, but achieve E2 or worse VOC levels in the air. Backstory: former employer spent $$ to integrate a VOC sensor into their residential HVAC/HRV solution. The idea was to increase ventilation when odors are present and reduce ventilation when the air was clean again. The engineer prototyped and tested the device in their pre-war home (brick, stone, old wood). All good. They had the first batch manufactured and sent out to customers in brand new homes full of modern materials (engineered wood, vinyl flooring etc). The sensors were permanently saturated (reading maximum VOC value) and the project ended up being canceled, because newly built homes were their entire customer base.