Air quality regulations tighten
Paint and
coatings
makers are
worried about
increasingly
stringent
air quality
regulations.

Worries in Europe about air pollu- tion were intensified in April as a massive cloud of ash from a volcanic eruption in Iceland grounded all passenger aircraft in the region.

However these concerns about air quality, stemming from a rising incidence of respiratory disease, are also raising anxieties among producers of coatings and related products. They are generating health and environmental regulations at the European Union (EU) and national levels which are bewildering coatings manufacturers and distributors because of a lack of clarity about how exactly they apply to coatings.

At the same time, with coatings in particular, they are leading to fragmentation in the EU’s single market because they are resulting in the imposition of different standards and labelling rules in individual countries.

The European Commission, the EU’s Brussels-based executive, has indicated that for the moment it does not want to tighten up existing regulations curbing emissions of volatile organic compounds (VOCs) from decorative and auto refinishing coatings despite claims that the legislation is ambiguous and open to different interpretations.

“We are disappointed that the commission is not considering revising the VOC legislation because parts of it have not been working well due to a lack of clear definitions,” said Jacques Warnon, technical director at CEPE—the European trade association for paints, printing inks and artist colors.

Now the EU is concentrating more on the
interior air quality (IAQ) of buildings rather
than pollution caused by VOCs such as sol-
vents. EU leaders want, for example, to accel-
erate the passage through the European
Parliament and the Council of Ministers—the
two arms of the European Union’s legisla-
ture—of the proposed Construction Products
Regulation (CPR). Paints manufacturers are
unhappy with this piece of legislation because
of doubts about how it relates to coatings.