How long do VOCs outgas from paints? How about particleboard?
VOCs or volatile organic compounds are a very large class of chemicals that offgas malodorous and often unhealthy fumes. Common chemicals in this group for paints are toluene, benzene, acetone, and formaldehyde, while for particleboard it is formaldehyde. Paints offgas as many VOCs as they can in a short period of time. It is said that paints offgas 80-90% of their VOCs within a couple of weeks of their application, while the last 10-20% offgases over the next year rising during times of higher temperature and humidity. The VOCs are transported into the air to be breathed in by occupants, attached to soft materials such as clothes, drapes, furniture and carpeting, and dissipated to the outdoor air to help cause low level smog. Ways to avoid VOC are to buy paints with very low or no VOCs at all. Federal standards require water-based paints to generally be under 250 grams/liter in VOC content and oil-based paints to be under 380 grams/liter in VOC content. Water-based paints have improve
