I-10 Compliance: Interior Product with the Potential to Emit VOCs – Above Green

All building products that have the potential to emit Volatile Organic Compounds (VOCs) and are intended for installation within the building envelope (defined as interior of the wall and roof vapor barrier) must supply a laboratory certificate of compliance with an Approved Product Emissions Standard.

If a building product, for which chamber testing is required, does not supply a laboratory certificate of compliance or conformant product certification, it will not be considered compliant with the Healthy Interior Performance Imperative of the Living Building Challenge, and will be identified as such on the Declare label.

Although product VOC emissions compliance no longer impacts a product’s Declaration Status and compliance with LBC Imperative I-13 Red List under Declare 2.0, emissions testing may be required to demonstrate compliance with certain LBC Temporary Exceptions, such as RL-009 – Formaldehyde.

Approved Product Emissions Standards

California Department of Public Health (CDPH) Standard Method v1.1-2010
California Department of Public Health (CDPH) Standard Method v1.2-2017
AgBB Health-related Evaluation for VOC Emissions from Building Products Scheme 2009
AgBB Scheme French A+ 2011
LBC Temporary Exception: Product Air Testing in Oceania

Conformant Certifications That Use CDPH as Testing Standard

SCS Indoor Advantage Gold, EC 10.2 Standard Addendum
FloorScore, EC 10.2 Standard Addendum
Collaborative for High Performance Schools (CHPS), Procedures and Standards for Product Inclusion Version
NSF 332
UL Greenguard Gold, UL 2818 and UL 2821
Intertek Sustainability, Clean Air

Other certifications or test reports may be submitted to declare.support@living-future.org for evaluation. Please provide a clear explanation of their conformance with CDPH or AgBB Scheme testing methods.

LBC Temporary Exception: Product Air Testing in Oceania

Products manufactured in, having a final point of assembly in, and distributed within the Oceania region, defined as Australia, New Zealand, Melanesia, Micronesia, and Polynesia, may demonstrate compliance with the Healthy Interior Environment Imperative by testing to ISO 16000, ISO 10580, or ASTM D5116. Products must demonstrate they are low emitting by providing a testing report from a certified lab that demonstrates the emission factor is equal to or less than:

tVOCs= 450 μg/m³
Formaldehyde =60 μg/m³
Manufacturers must also advocate to the testing lab to offer CDPH or AgBB chamber testing for their products to help build demand for these testing schemes.