The quality of indoor air in buildings has begun to matter more and more, but how is that quality measured? What are the pollutants being used to measure it?
The most widely analysed and assessed pollutants are VOCs, but…
What are VOCs?
And what are SVOCs?
There are two types of organic compound we can find in the indoor environment, generated by the many products we use: volatile ones (VOCs) and semi-volatile ones (SVOCs).
VOCs, in turn, can be of very different origin, nature, toxicity and danger to humans. The only thing they have in common is their volatility at a certain temperature and set of environmental conditions.
Their classification in Europe is based solely on their volatility point, not on their toxicity. The criterion applied, and the requirement for them to be specified on products’ technical data sheets and labels, has been based only on their greater volatility and ease of detection, with the aim of curbing their rise into the ozone layer, but not on their impact on human biology or on the quality of indoor air in buildings.
Elsewhere, such as the United States, their classification does take into account their nature and their danger to human life.
However, the compounds most harmful to human life are the ones that European legislation does not require producers and manufacturers to declare on their data sheets: SVOCs. These are compounds of higher molecular weight which, because they do not volatilise as easily as the previous ones, remain far longer (a good number of years) within the home’s indoor environments, clinging to fabrics and preferentially to synthetic surfaces, causing far greater pollution in indoor environments. On top of this, they are usually all of synthetic origin and quite toxic; that is, there is hardly any variation in their degree of toxicity as there is with VOCs, all of them being highly toxic.
The criterion most widely adopted by the manufacturers of the treatments we sent you information about in the past is to avoid using substances that contain or generate SVOCs. And if they do generate VOCs, that these should not be harmful or toxic to human life, or damaging to the environment, because they are natural. As a recommendation, VOCs are always very easy to remove with proper ventilation of the space, whereas SVOCs are not.
This may explain your throat irritation, due to the presence of harmful or toxic VOCs and the certain presence of SVOCs in the “eco-friendly” products of much of the industry.
