Allergy sufferers can breathe a sigh of relief

Simply switch off from the daily grind and enjoy the good things in life – that’s what your home is meant for. People usu­ally decide for them­selves who or what moves into their com­fort zone. Aller­gens, how­ever, can sneak in without being noticed. This is par­tic­u­larly true of pol­len and anim­al hair. But also build­ing mater­i­als can con­tain aller­gen­ic sub­stances. For people with a genet­ic pre­dis­pos­i­tion or sub­ject to con­stant expos­ure, there is a high risk that these aller­gens cause asthma, neurodermatit­is or oth­er atop­ic dis­eases. They should there­fore take pre­cau­tions. But how does that work?

Some health labels claim that the build­ing or install­a­tion products cer­ti­fied by them are com­pletely free of aller­gens. But that’s just hot air. Also man­u­fac­tur­ers often main­tain that the nat­ur­al mater­i­als con­tained in their products are par­tic­u­larly well suited for allergy suf­fer­ers. But even “abso­lutely nat­ur­al mater­i­als” such as wood, wool or oils can trig­ger aller­gies. Klaus Winkels, Man­aging Dir­ect­or of GEV (Asso­ci­ation for the Con­trol of Emis­sions in Products for Floor­ing Install­a­tion, Adhes­ives and Build­ing Mater­i­als) warns: “Aller­­­gen-free houses and build­ing products do not exist and can­not exist. Even if there may be a high­er aller­gen­ic poten­tial with cer­tain sub­stances, every per­son reacts in a dif­fer­ent way. What is well tol­er­ated by one per­son or even edible food can have a ser­i­ous impact on the health of oth­ers. Aller­gic reac­tions there­fore need to be examined on a case-by-case basis. Some sub­stances are intro­duced in trace amounts by pre­curs­ors without the man­u­fac­turer know­ing or being able to con­trol this. This is espe­cially true for nat­ur­al products.”

In prac­tice, this means that each case needs to be con­sidered indi­vidu­ally. First of all, it should be clear what type of allergy the per­son suf­fers from. With this know­ledge in mind, suit­able build­ing mater­i­als can be chosen with com­pon­ents that are as harm­less as pos­sible and have the least sens­it­iz­ing effect on the per­son. As a gen­er­al rule, build­ers and ren­ov­at­ors should take care to use mater­i­als that ensure healthy liv­ing. “Clean” indoor air takes top pri­or­ity – not only for allergy suf­fer­ers.

Build­ing and install­a­tion mater­i­als with the low­est emis­sions world­wide bear the EMICODE^® seal on the product pack­aging. The con­tent of VOCs emit­ted into indoor air is determ­ined by inde­pend­ent labor­at­or­ies. Reg­u­lar spot checks car­ried out by inde­pend­ent experts and test­ing insti­tutes ensure long-term com­pli­ance with the lim­it val­ues. This dis­tin­guishes EMICODE^® from oth­er cer­ti­fic­a­tion sys­tems for health and envir­on­ment­al com­pat­ib­il­ity.