Oct. 21/28 2013; Volume 27/number 13
LaGrange, Ga.—The Resilient Floor Covering Institute (RFCI) has developed Product Transparency Declarations (PTD) as tools for disclosing product ingredients and performing health risk assessments on finished flooring materials. RFCI officials said the declarations address the informational needs of architects, designers and specifiers by disclosing intentionally added ingredients including heavy metals, acknowledging ingredients on six authoritative lists and indicating whether the ingredient level triggers an exposure warning notification based on content in the building material or product.
The six lists referenced in PTDs include the International Agency on the Research of Cancer Terminology, National Toxicology Program, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, California Proposition 65, Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) Toxic Release Inventory and REACH Substances of Very High Concern.
PTDs go a step beyond Health Product Declarations (HPD), noted Dean Thompson, RFCI’s president, because “they indicate whether there is a concern over human exposure to a product ingredient in a building material that requires a warning label.” The PTD concept was developed by RFCI to meet the needs of the specifier community for resilient flooring. However, PTDs can used be for all types of building materials.
Published voluntarily by product manufacturers, PTDs are verified with the signature of a responsible company official. “They are the latest in a suite of sustainability tools available for resilient flooring,” Thompson said. Five industry average EPDs were introduced in August.
“PTDs represent a step forward in marrying ingredient disclosure with exposure disclosure,” Thompson said. “In addition to listing product ingredients, exposure risks and requirements for warning labels, PTDs identify if a heavy metal is an added ingredient and disclose recycled content, environmental certifications, VOC emissions and content, and whether the product complies with VOC emissions testing, such as CA 1350.
“We’re proud to be the first industry to offer PTDs,” he concluded. “The resilient flooring industry has been diligent in its efforts to bring transparency to the sustainability process. PTDs are one of a variety of tools that assist specifiers and purchasers in evaluating and comparing the sustainability attributes of resilient flooring products.”
The resilient industry also offers the NSF/ANSI 332 Sustainability Assessment Standard for Resilient Flooring, a third-party certified, multi-attribute standard, and FloorScore, a third-party certification by Scientific Certification Systems (SCS) for indoor air emissions.
For more information, visit rfci.com.