Building materials are often touted as being "green", without a robust scientific definition of themeaning of this term. Nevertheless, there is a rapidly expanding market for such materials. Onecriterion that is sometimes used for green materials is that they are low emitting. However, thiscriterion generally applies to so-called "primary" emissions, typically of volatile organiccompounds (VOCs), which are emitted from the actual components of the manufactured product.In fact, many green materials are bio-based, and comprised of components that may be highlyreactive with ozone. This leads to the potential for significant "secondary" emissions of reactionproducts such as aldehydes and ketones. This study focuses on the reactivity of nine commongreen wall, flooring, ceiling, and cabinetry materials with ozone. More specifically, smallelectro-polished stainless steel chambers were used to expose these materials (ceiling tile,unglazed ceramic tile, natural cork wall-paper, aluminum tinted cork wall-paper, bamboo, UVcoatedbamboo, wheat board, UV-coated wheat board, and sunflower board) to ozone at realisticindoor concentrations. The specific green ceiling tile that was tested was highly reactive withozone, with degree of reactivity per unit area followed by natural cork wall-paper and wheatboard. However, a preliminary generalization is that select green building materials are notsignificantly different in reactivity (measured in terms of reaction probability) than conventionalanalog materials for which there are ample data in the published literature.
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