Coatings World - August 2008

“REACH, whose deadlines for registra-

tion of substances stretches over an

11-year period to 2018, is regarded by

critics as taking too long to come fully

into effect to deal with threats of issues

like air pollution.”

late in the air of the buildings, which over a long period could be harmful for human health,” he added.

Among the first measures to be taken by EU legislators to improve interior air quality is likely to be a tightening up of the two VOC directives, especially the one on Decopaint, which comes fully into effect in 2010.

In two years the solvent content of solventborne matt paints for interior walls and ceilings will have to cut by more than 90% to 30 grams per litre (g/l). Even the solvent content of waterborne paints for similar applications will have to be reduced by over half to 75 g/l.

The solvent content of glossy paints for interior walls and ceilings will have to be reduced by 75% to 100 g/l for solventborne coatings and by a third for waterborne ones.

“There is now a lot of talk in Brussels in and around the European Commission, the EU executive, about the scope for making the VOC directives more restrictive,” said a coatings industry executive. “The Commission seems to think that the controls in the existing directive are not and will not cause the coatings industry serious problems so further limits would be manageable for coatings companies.”

The Commission has already taken advantage of a provision in the Decopaint directive for a review of the legislation. It has hired a firm of German consultants to investigate possible improvements to the directive’s regulations.

The EU is considered to have room to give the Decopaint directive greater bite because of the relatively large amounts of solvents still being allowed after 2010 in products like gloss paints.

However it is more likely that any new legislation will focus on types of solvents and on other organic VOCs rather than limits on quantities. This could particularly be the case with solvents comprising or containing aromatic substances.

An advisory scientific committee of the European Commission pinpointed in a report last year on indoor air quality a number of potentially dangerous chemicals, including benzene, naphthalene and formaldehyde.

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Moves are already being made also against non-VOC substances—such as off gas from coatings and other products—as part of a comprehensive review of risks from chemicals and materials used in the construction sector. This is being done under another piece of legislation, the Construction Products Directive (CPD).

“When it was drawn up the CPD was not meant to apply to coatings,” said Bross. “But the German federal government has set up a committee which is examining, under the provisions of the CPD, products used in construction which could be harmful to health. Coatings are being included within its remit. The Commission apparently thinks the work of this committee is a good idea and a similar exercise could be done to cover the whole of the EU.”

The Commission is in fact planning to issue a Green Paper, or discussion document, on interior air quality at the end of next year. A possible outcome of that could be the drafting of legislation to combat a broad range of indoor air pollutants, including chemicals in coatings. CW