Emis­sion is the release of gaseous, liquid or sol­id sub­stances from indus­tri­al facil­it­ies or mater­i­als into the envir­on­ment. Also vibra­tions, noise or radi­ation can be emit­ted. The main factor influ­en­cing indoor air qual­ity is the emis­sion of gaseous organ­ic com­pounds (VOCs: see ques­tion 2) – above all the type and quant­ity.

VOCs are volat­ile, organ­ic com­pounds that change from the liquid to the gaseous state at room tem­per­at­ure and nor­mal pres­sure. Typ­ic­al VOCs include all organ­ic solvents, but also fuels such as gas­ol­ine, dies­el oil and the like. Unfor­tu­nately, there is no gen­er­ally bind­ing defin­i­tion of VOCs. Some of the defin­i­tions dif­fer sig­ni­fic­antly from each oth­er.

The European Dir­ect­ive 2010/75/EU (IED Dir­ect­ive) defines VOCs as organ­ic sub­stances whose vapor pres­sure is 0.01 kPa or more (at room tem­per­at­ure T = 20 °C = 293.15 K). This defin­i­tion is almost identic­al with the defin­i­tion of solvents under ques­tion 3. A dif­fer­ent defin­i­tion is giv­en by European Dir­ect­ive 2004/42/EC (Decopaint Dir­ect­ive).

Accord­ing to this Dir­ect­ive, all volat­ile sub­stances with a boil­ing point or ini­tial boil­ing point of 250 °C or lower (at nor­mal pres­sure p = 101.3 kPa) are to be regarded as VOCs.

VOCs with a boil­ing point above 250 °C are referred to as SVOCs (Semi-Volat­ile Organ­ic Com­pounds). TVOC (Total Volat­ile Organ­ic Com­pounds) is the sum of all VOC val­ues meas­ured for indi­vidu­al sub­stances, while TSVOC is the sum of all indi­vidu­ally meas­ured SVOCs.

In addi­tion to the total sum of emis­sions, a so-called “Low­est Con­cen­tra­tion of Interest” (LCI value) has been defined for the indi­vidu­al eval­u­ation of many sub­stances. To obtain EMICODE® class EC 1PLUS, an indi­vidu­al sub­stance eval­u­ation is car­ried out on the basis of LCI val­ues.

Gen­er­ally speak­ing, solvents are liquid sub­stances in which oth­er sub­stances dis­solve. These can either be of an inor­gan­ic (e.g. water) or organ­ic nature. In our con­text, how­ever, we usu­ally mean organ­ic solvents – as defined, for example, in TRGS 610, the “Tech­nic­al Rules for Haz­ard­ous Sub­stances” (import­ant for Ger­many). These rules define solvents as organ­ic sub­stances with a boil­ing point of 200 °C or lower. Con­cern­ing sur­face treat­ment agents for par­quet, the term “solventì is defined by TRGS 617 as a sub­stance with a boil­ing point of 250 °C or lower. Solvents are used to dis­solve oth­er sub­stances and are expec­ted to evap­or­ate more or less quickly after applic­a­tion of the product, e.g. a paint or adhes­ive. Plas­ti­cizers are rel­at­ively non-volat­ile and are there­fore clas­si­fied as SVOCs rather than VOCs.

VOCs can have dif­fer­ent sources. For example, build­ing products may con­tain solvents that evap­or­ate inten­tion­ally or unin­ten­tion­ally. But also oth­er mater­i­als, fur­nish­ings or devices may con­tain organ­ic sub­stances that release VOCs into indoor air. Examples include chip­boards, build­ing mater­i­als, tex­tiles and plastics, wood, wool, per­fumes, scen­ted candles, air freshen­ers, pho­to­copi­ers, care products, nail pol­ish removers, cos­met­ics and many more. These VOCs can be the res­ult of pro­duc­tion pro­cesses (e.g. resid­ual solvents from a fur­niture var­nish), degrad­a­tion reac­tions of organ­ic sub­stances caused by the pres­ence of atmo­spher­ic
oxy­gen, by light or by rot and mold (micro­bi­al VOCs, so-called MVOCs). Also humans, anim­als and plants emit sig­ni­fic­ant amounts of VOCs. Indoor air can there­fore be pol­luted by VOC emis­sions from a vari­ety of sources. In newly fin­ished rooms, it is par­tic­u­larly freshly applied paints, adhes­ives, seal­ants but also new fur­niture and home tex­tiles that tem­por­ar­ily increase the TVOC con­cen­tra­tion.

With the help of mod­ern, highly sens­it­ive labor­at­ory test­ing, e.g. by means of gas chro­ma­to­graphy (GC) and mass spec­tro­metry (MS), even the smal­lest traces of VOCs in the air can now be detec­ted and quan­ti­fied. The emis­sion beha­vi­or of mater­i­als can be determ­ined in spe­cial test cham­bers from which air samples are taken and ana­lyzed after pre­defined meas­ur­ing times. VOC con­cen­tra­tions are indic­ated in mg/m3 or µg/m3, i.e. thou­sandths or mil­lionths of a gram per cubic
meter of air. The sum total of indi­vidu­al VOC con­cen­tra­tions is the TVOC value (total con­cen­tra­tion of VOCs).

Sub­stances that are known to be harm­ful to health, tox­ic, car­ci­no­gen­ic or oth­er­wise haz­ard­ous are sub­ject to lim­it val­ues, restric­tions on use and labeling require­ments. How­ever, there is little sci­en­tific­ally proven know­ledge about the effects of many oth­er VOCs, espe­cially when only low con­cen­tra­tions are involved. Since many VOCs are sus­pec­ted of hav­ing a neg­at­ive impact on our well-being and health, either alone or in com­bin­a­tion, sci­ent­ists around the world are now work­ing on ways to pre­vent VOC emis­sions. Some EU coun­tries, espe­cially Bel­gi­um, Ger­many and France, have nation­al reg­u­la­tions for the VOC and SVOC con­tents of cer­tain products.

In the so-called Seifert study, con­duc­ted in 1985/86, the Fed­er­al Health Agency of that time reques­ted the meas­ure­ment of VOC con­cen­tra­tions in indoor air of approx. 500 Ger­man house­holds. More than 50 dif­fer­ent sub­stances were found. Total con­cen­tra­tions var­ied widely from house­hold to house­hold, ran­ging from 170 to 2600 µg/m≥. The stat­ist­ic­al ana­lys­is of this study showed a mean value (50th per­cent­ile or medi­an) of approx. 330 µg/m≥, which was roun­ded to 300 µg/m≥. Since then, it has been regarded by many experts as the tar­get value to be achieved.

In 1990, Seifert him­self stated at the Indoor Air Con­fer­ence in Ott­awa that the 300 µg/m≥ TVOC value and the val­ues for indi­vidu­al VOC groups were only tar­get val­ues to be achieved in the long term ñ without tox­ic­o­lo­gic­al eval­u­ation. For newly ren­ov­ated rooms, for example, he described an exceedance of these val­ues by a factor of 50 after 1 week and by a factor of 10 after 6 weeks as per­fectly accept­able.

Due to much more refined test meth­ods and sys­tems today, it can be assumed that a con­sid­er­ably lar­ger num­ber of sub­stances would be found today, res­ult­ing also in high­er nor­mal val­ues. Moreover, also the product com­pos­i­tion has changed sig­ni­fic­antly. It is import­ant to under­stand that Seifer­t’s tar­get value of 300 µg/m≥ for indoor air, which is affected by numer­ous com­plex factors, has noth­ing what­so­ever to do with the test cham­ber val­ues obtained for indi­vidu­al products or mater­i­als. Test cham­ber val­ues allow a rel­at­ive eval­u­ation of products (rank­ing), but do not provide inform­a­tion about expec­ted indoor air con­cen­tra­tions.

Often, nat­ur­al or organ­ic products even have high­er VOC emis­sions than syn­thet­ic products. In nat­ur­al adhes­ives, for instance, nat­ur­al tree res­ins, tur­pen­tine oils and oth­er sub­stances are used, which emit con­sid­er­able amounts of so-called terpenes. These can cause typ­ic­al odors and high TVOC levels in indoor air.

Renowned man­u­fac­tur­ers of floor­ing adhes­ives decided to devel­op low-emis­sion floor­ing install­a­tion products and pro­mote their use in the mar­ket. In order to cre­ate a bind­ing basis, the GEV or “Gemeinsch­aft Emis­sion­skon­trol­lierte Ver­legew­erkstoffe e.V.” (Asso­ci­ation for the Con­trol of Emis­sions in Products for Floor­ing Install­a­tion) was foun­ded in Feb­ru­ary 1997.

To meet the mar­ket’s demands for test­ing fur­ther product cat­egor­ies, the GEV was renamed in 2007 to “Gemeinsch­aft Emis­sion­skon­trol­lierte Ver­legew­erkstoffe, Kleb­stoffe und Bauprodukte e.V.” (Asso­ci­ation for the Con­trol of Emis­sions in Products for Floor­ing Install­a­tion, Adhes­ives and Build­ing Mater­i­als). Every man­u­fac­turer of such products can become a GEV mem­ber. Spon­sor­ing mem­ber­ships are pos­sible and very wel­come.

The GEVës main task is the pro­mo­tion of safety at work as well as con­sumer and envir­on­ment­al pro­tec­tion con­cern­ing the use of chem­ic­al build­ing products. The asso­ci­ation pur­sues an open inform­a­tion policy and sup­ports cross-vendor cooper­a­tion with all part­ners in the industry.

The first and fore­most goal was to give the mar­ket a tool that allows users a vendor-neut­ral assess­ment of the avail­able products and enable them to com­pare the numer­ous floor­ing install­a­tion mater­i­als, adhes­ives and build­ing products with respect to their VOC emis­sions. For this pur­pose, the EMICODEÆ clas­si­fic­a­tion sys­tem was developed.

In Janu­ary 2025, the GEV had 250 ordin­ary mem­bers and 2 sup­port­ing mem­bers from 24 coun­tries. You can find the cur­rent list of mem­bers on www.emicode.com/en/en-members. Of course, you can also request the list by phone or email.

info@emicode.com
Phone: +49 211 67931–20

World­wide, any man­u­fac­turer of floor­ing install­a­tion mater­i­als, adhes­ives, build­ing products or raw mater­i­als can become a mem­ber if the com­pany agrees to com­ply with the GEV’s Con­sti­tu­tion and to pro­mote the GEV’s object­ives.

EMICODE® is the trade­mark-pro­tec­ted name of a clas­si­fic­a­tion sys­tem that is used to clas­si­fy floor­ing install­a­tion mater­i­als, adhes­ives and build­ing products accord­ing to their emis­sion beha­vi­or into one of the fol­low­ing three classes:

EMICODE® EC 1PLUS

EMICODE® EC 1

EMICODE® EC 2

Clas­si­fic­a­tion accord­ing to the EMICODE® sys­tem is based on ana­lyt­ic­ally determ­ined meas­ure­ment data and on con­crete clas­si­fic­a­tion cri­ter­ia, obtained using a defined test meth­od. Since the term “low-emis­sion” has neither been stand­ard­ized nor clearly defined, the EMICODE® sys­tem provides a bind­ing basis for the assess­ment and selec­tion of floor­ing install­a­tion mater­i­als, adhes­ives and build­ing products.

Early 1997 the EMICODE® clas­si­fic­a­tion sys­tem was ini­tially developed for floor­ing install­a­tion products (primers, fillers and floor­ing adhes­ives) with the focus on indoor air hygiene. By now, the spec­trum has been expan­ded con­sid­er­ably.

Mean­while, the EMICODE® clas­si­fic­a­tion cri­ter­ia have been adap­ted at the request of oth­er indus­tri­al sec­tors. The spe­cial advant­age of the sys­tem is that the meth­ods of test­ing, cer­ti­fic­a­tion and con­trol are always tailored to the spe­cif­ic char­ac­ter­ist­ics of the build­ing mater­i­als and product cat­egor­ies. For an over­view of the cur­rent cat­egor­ies and products please refer to www.emicode.com/en/produkte.

Class EMICODE® EC 1PLUS is cur­rently the highest stand­ard for low-emis­sion products and thus rep­res­ents the lim­it of what is tech­nic­ally feas­ible today. This class is the sys­tem­at­ic fur­ther devel­op­ment of class EMICODE® EC 1, estab­lished and well-proven until 2010 – only at a much high­er level and with much stricter lim­it val­ues.

With­in the EMICODE® sys­tem, the clas­si­fic­a­tion ranges for TVOCs (total volat­ile organ­ic com­pounds) and TSVOCs (total semi-volat­ile organ­ic com­pounds) as well as for indi­vidu­al sub­stances have been defined as fol­lows:

 

The EMICODE® clas­si­fic­a­tion sys­tem dis­tin­guishes between two large product groups: the very broad group of floor­ing install­a­tion mater­i­als, adhes­ives and build­ing products and the smal­ler group of sur­face treat­ment products for ser­vice floors. The EMICODE® sys­tem always reflects the state of the art as well as any iden­ti­fi­able options and needs for fur­ther devel­op­ment.

The require­ments for the vari­ous products, laid down in the clas­si­fic­a­tion cri­ter­ia, are so demand­ing that tech­nic­al pro­gress is pro­moted and product optim­iz­a­tion becomes neces­sary. As the state of the art dif­fers for the two product groups, it is reflec­ted in slightly dif­fer­ent require­ments.

A product inten­ded for EMICODE® labeling must ful­fil a num­ber of import­ant basic require­ments. Adhes­ives, for instance, must be free of solvents and have a boil­ing point below 200 °C. A trace amount of max. 0.5 % is tol­er­ated as it is often unavoid­able for tech­nic­al reas­ons. Fur­ther­more, the emis­sion of cer­tain C‑substances (see ques­tion 19) must be below spe­cified lim­its after only 72 hours in the test cham­ber. In addi­tion, an EU Safety Data Sheet must be avail­able for the product.

Clas­si­fic­a­tion into one of the three EMICODE® classes depends on the total emis­sion of TVOCs and TSVOCs. These val­ues are determ­ined in the test cham­ber using the applic­able GEV test meth­od. Test meth­ods and clas­si­fic­a­tion cri­ter­ia are laid down by the GEV’s Tech­nic­al Coun­cil. This is elec­ted every two years by the GEV’s Gen­er­al Assembly and sup­por­ted by extern­al experts. The Tech­nic­al Coun­cil is also respons­ible for con­tinu­ously updat­ing the meth­ods and clas­si­fic­a­tion cri­ter­ia and for fur­ther devel­op­ing the EMICODE® sys­tem.

Gen­er­ally speak­ing, C‑substances are car­ci­no­gen­ic sub­stances. They are sub­divided into three cat­egor­ies.

Cat­egory 1A: Sub­stances known to have car­ci­no­gen­ic poten­tial for humans.

Cat­egory 1B: Sub­stances that are car­ci­no­gen­ic in anim­al stud­ies and pre­sumed to have car­ci­no­gen­ic poten­tial for humans.

Cat­egory 2: Sub­stances sus­pec­ted of hav­ing car­ci­no­gen­ic poten­tial for humans.

When meas­ur­ing the emis­sions of a product in the test cham­ber, air samples are taken after 3 and 28 days to determ­ine wheth­er and in what con­cen­tra­tion rel­ev­ant C‑substances are emit­ted. To obtain EMICODE® clas­si­fic­a­tion, the emis­sions must not exceed pre­defined lim­it val­ues (see ques­tion 16).

Test­ing is car­ried out with the help of a test cham­ber pro­ced­ure that has been developed and defined in cooper­a­tion with renowned test­ing insti­tutes. Depend­ing on the type of product, a char­ac­ter­ist­ic product sample is pre­pared. An adhes­ive, for instance, is applied to a pre­defined test sur­face. The sample is then placed into the test cham­ber whose vent­il­a­tion and cli­mat­ic con­di­tions have been laid down in EN 16516. The cham­ber must have a min­im­um volume of 100 liters. The size of the sample area is cal­cu­lated to pro­duce emis­sions of 0.007 to 0.4 m≤/m≥.

The GEV does not carry out tests itself but works with extern­al, inde­pend­ent test­ing labor­at­or­ies for this pur­pose. Sev­er­al round robin tests have shown that, from a qual­ity, com­pet­i­tion and cost point of view, the choice of test­ing insti­tutes should not be restric­ted in advance. How­ever, two con­di­tions must be ful­filled:

The labor­at­or­ies must (1) be pro­fi­cient in the GEV test meth­od (cham­ber test) and have the required equip­ment, (2) be accred­ited accord­ing to ISO 17025. The accred­it­a­tion must also include the GEV test meth­od or test­ing accord­ing to EN 16516.

The com­pany that com­mis­sioned the test is respons­ible for the respec­t­ive test res­ult. A list of labor­at­or­ies that achieved reli­able res­ults in the round robin tests ini­ti­ated by the GEV can be found on www.emicode.com/en/laboratories.

The products that can be tested accord­ing to GEV rules and cer­ti­fied with the EMICODE® label are very dif­fer­ent. There are, for instance, low-vis­cos­ity primers and var­nishes that are applied in a thin lay­er, pasty adhes­ives or seal­ants, but also mor­tars and screeds applied in a thick­er lay­er, as well as seal­ing tapes or strips, insu­la­tion and oth­er mater­i­als that are avail­able as fin­ished products in a spe­cif­ic form. Cur­ing takes place by simple dry­ing or by chem­ic­al reac­tion; cur­ing time depends on the lay­er thick­ness. For this reas­on, the sample must be pro­duced spe­cific­ally for this product group in such a way that the emis­sion beha­vi­or in the test cham­ber is rep­res­ent­at­ive of the product.

The cor­rect clas­si­fic­a­tion of the product into one of the EMICODE® classes is done on the mem­ber­ís own respons­ib­il­ity. It is based on the res­ults of the TVOC, TSVOC and C‑substance meas­ure­ments per­formed by a suit­able test­ing labor­at­ory. Through their mem­ber­ship, mem­bers com­mit them­selves to com­ply with the GEV’s Con­sti­tu­tion and clas­si­fic­a­tion cri­ter­ia. The use of the EMICODE® clas­si­fic­a­tion sys­tem thus ensures bind­ing and com­par­able product labeling.

The man­u­fac­turer first ensures that the basic require­ments for clas­si­fic­a­tion into one of the EMICODE® classes have been ful­filled. After that, he sub­mits a form­al applic­a­tion for licens­ing to the GEV. The applic­a­tion must include the test report of the extern­al test­ing insti­tute, the trade name of the product and an iden­ti­fic­a­tion num­ber that can be traced back to the product for­mu­la­tion. The issued license is val­id for five years.

In prin­ciple, only those products can be labeled with the EMICODE® whose man­u­fac­tur­ers are GEV mem­bers and thus recog­nize as bind­ing the rights and duties under the GEV Con­sti­tu­tion. Each product to be labeled must be assignable to one of the product groups lis­ted in the GEV product mat­rix and must meet the GEV’s basic require­ments (see ques­tion 18).

After test­ing the product with the GEV test meth­od, clas­si­fic­a­tion of the product accord­ing to the applic­able GEV clas­si­fic­a­tion cri­ter­ia and present­a­tion of a val­id GEV license, the product can be labeled with the EMICODE®.

In prin­ciple, only those products can be labeled with the EMICODE® whose man­u­fac­tur­ers are GEV mem­bers and thus recog­nize as bind­ing the rights and duties under the GEV Con­sti­tu­tion. Each product to be labeled must be assignable to one of the product groups lis­ted in the GEV product mat­rix and must meet the GEV’s basic require­ments (see ques­tion 18).

After test­ing the product with the GEV test meth­od, clas­si­fic­a­tion of the product accord­ing to the applic­able GEV clas­si­fic­a­tion cri­ter­ia and present­a­tion of a val­id GEV license, the product can be labeled with the EMICODE®.

Every year, the GEV spends a con­sid­er­able part of its mem­ber­ship fees (2023: approx. 100,000 Ä) on car­ry­ing out spot checks of ran­domly chosen licensed products. In the event of a viol­a­tion, the man­u­fac­turer con­cerned must bear the cost of test­ing and of any fur­ther qual­ity checks. In case of doubt, the dis­pute will be settled by arbit­ra­tion. Repeated viol­a­tions may res­ult in the mem­ber­’s expul­sion from the GEV. If any non-com­pli­ance with the GEV cri­ter­ia is detec­ted and repor­ted by a third party, the GEV mem­ber con­cerned will also pay the test­ing costs of the third party in case of con­firm­a­tion.

Dur­ing applic­a­tion, EMICOD® EC 1 and EC 1PLUS labeled products only give off a slight odor and are prac­tic­ally odor­less after harden­ing. Odors from EMICODE® products them­selves are there­fore not to be expec­ted – provided they are used cor­rectly and expertly. This also includes clean­ing and expert pre­par­a­tion of the sur­faces to which the product is to be applied. How­ever, it is a well-known fact that the devel­op­ment of odors after fin­ish­ing or renov­a­tion work can have a vari­ety of causes.

These include, above all, so-called sec­ond­ary emis­sions. These odor-pro­du­cing sub­stances can be the res­ult of alkaline mois­ture, insuf­fi­cient dry­ing or oth­er causes. It would there­fore be wrong to assume that there can no longer be odor com­plaints in con­nec­tion with EC 1PLUS products. In the event of a com­plaint, how­ever, the per­son who recom­men­ded or used an EC 1PLUS labeled product need not be unduly con­cerned about any ambi­ent air tests that may be per­formed.

With the excep­tion of purely inor­gan­ic, min­er­al or metal­lic mater­i­als, there are hardly any products that do not emit at least traces of VOCs in one form or anoth­er. Organ­ic mater­i­als, such as plastics or nat­ur­al mater­i­als, can there­fore nev­er be emis­sion-free. Today, with the advances in ana­lyt­ic­al meth­ods and devices, it is pos­sible to detect an ever-increas­ing num­ber of VOCs in lower and lower con­cen­tra­tions. This is why emis­sion-free chem­ic­al build­ing products do not and will not exist in the future. The GEV there­fore con­siders the use of the term “emis­sion-free” as incor­rect and mis­lead­ing.

In addi­tion to the EMICOD®, there are oth­er nation­al and inter­na­tion­al labels that provide inform­a­tion on the emis­sions of build­ing products, e.g. the “Blue Angel” or “Green­guard” in the USA. Series of tests car­ried out by the GEV have shown that EC 1 labeled products also meet the require­ments of these clas­si­fic­a­tion sys­tems. Class EC 1PLUS, on the oth­er hand, has set a new bench­mark that is cur­rently not matched by any oth­er class in any oth­er sys­tem.

The EMICODE® makes a con­tri­bu­tion in vari­ous areas of “sus­tain­able build­ing”. Fur­ther inform­a­tion on this can be found in the vari­ous GEV bro­chures on the sub­ject of sus­tain­ab­il­ity.

Con­tri­bu­tion to sus­tain­ab­il­ity — of build­ings

Con­tri­bu­tion to sus­tain­ab­il­ity — par­quet adhes­ives

Con­tri­bu­tion to sus­tain­ab­il­ity — sur­face treat­ment of par­quet

Questions and answers about the GEV and EMICODE®