Abstract
The health issue of Green building material (GBM) Labeling has already been one of the urgent issues for evaluating living environment in Taiwan. Inappropriate use of the artificial chemical building materials, the potential hazards and health risk of indoor air quality (IAQ) were occurred. The GBM labeling system of Taiwan was officially launched in 2004 to systematically and effectively evaluate the performance of green building materials. The GBM system covers four major aspects, including Health, Ecology, Recycling, and High-performance. In addition, the regulation of at least 30% mandatory GBM utilization has also been involved into Taiwan’s Building Code and become effective since July 2009. The emission rate of formaldehyde and TVOC are used to evaluate the healthy green building materials. Therefore, the purpose of this study is planned to estimate the health risk emitted from GBM on indoor environment and understand the health effect of different building materials on indoor environment to preserve the human health. Finally, the risk ranking of Volatile Organic Compounds (VOCs) emitted from different green building materials can be addressed. The study first collected the case study data of GBM Labeling, and then checked the item of general regulation of GBM Labeling and healthy category. Second, the risk assessment method of building materials was established to assess the health risk of VOCs on indoor environment under specific loading factor of interior decoration materials. Finally, the simulation and comparision of risk level based on different type of healthy building materials was performed. Based on the above analysis results, the important findings of this study are concluded as follows: 1. The survey results indicated that water-base paint and board material were main distributions of GBM Labeling, and the emissions rate of formaldehyde and TVOC were below GBM standard. 2. The formaldehyde and benzene of GBM labeling were identified cancer effect, and toluene, ethylbenzene, m/p-xylene and o-xylene GBM Labeling were identified noncancer effect. 3. The IAQ problems are mainly related to the interior decoration quantity. The simulation results indicated that the cancer risk of formaldehyde and benzene were acceptable risk, and the hazard quotient of toluene, ethylbenzene, m/p-xylene and o-xylene were less 1 (no adverse effect) under specific condition on indoor environment (3m*3m*2.5m) and loading factor of interior decoration materials (0.4). The immediate and long-term suggestions of this study are proposed as follows: 1. For immediate suggestion: Planning to increase the item of risk assessment should be incorporated in healthy green building materials labeling by the Architecture and Building Research Institute, Ministry of the interior (ABRI). 2. For long-term suggestion: Planning to increase the measure indicators of different VOCs categories for TVOC emission rate, under the new CNS standard of IAQ measure become effective by the ABRI.