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Product Review from Environmental Building News

January 1, 2008

PlybooPure is Formaldehyde Free

This interior features Plyboo bamboo flooring and cabinets made with Plyboo panels.

Most bamboo flooring and panel products are made with urea-formaldehyde (UF) glue. Citing tests based on European standards (none have yet been certified to the Greenguard or FloorScore standards in the U.S.), most bamboo manufacturers claim that their products have very low formaldehyde emissions, but few can honestly claim zero added urea-formaldehyde. By January 2008, however, bamboo flooring pioneer Smith & Fong will be shipping PlybooPure—a line of bamboo flooring and panel products made with a polyisocyanurate binder (similar to the glues used in agrifiber products) in place of UF.

With its partners in China and Taiwan, Smith & Fong has spent over $500,000 in equipment and technology to produce the formaldehyde-free products, according to president and founder Dan Smith. Isocyanurate is very stable once it has cured but is highly reactive in the factory and therefore a threat to workers. The new facility will have “all things that you’d expect in a Western-style environment,” said Smith, in response to questions about worker safety. “People will be working with ventilator headsets” to provide an extra margin of safety, he added. PlybooPure flooring should be available at little or no upcharge, according to the company, but the plywood panels will cost more.

– Nadav Malin

For more information:

Dan Smith, President and Founder
Smith & Fong Company
South San Francisco, California
866-835-9859
www.plyboo.com

DISCUSSIONS

Reader-contributed comments related to EBN: 17:1 - PlybooPure is Formaldehyde Free. Comments are listed with newest at the top.

Chemicals other than formaldehdye, sustainability of imported, composite wood products Posted by Hal Levin on Jan 28, 2008, 08:20 PM
Last year, while searching for a good floor covering for my own house, I had a couple of products (not Plyboo Pure) emissions tested only to find out that there were lots of emissions other than formaldehyde. The products were marketed aggressively as "green," low-emitting, and non-toxic. In fact, there were very strong emissions from the finish on one of the products that were not deemed very healthy chemicals as best as could be determined. The results of the emissions tests led me to discard the idea of buying one of these composite products and to install solid wood flooring -- Tanoak, a locally abundant, fast-growing native hardwood that is mostly cut for firewood but if cured slowly and at a lower temperature, it can be stable and used for interior finishes including flooring. I had it coated with a Swedish product that had virtually no odor and is generally accepted as a good albeit rather expensive hardwood finish.

Apart from emissions, unlike composite bamboo products, a locally-grown material avoids the substantial investment in transportation energy to import materials from China or elsewhere.

Finally, the solid wood floor milled to standard wood flooring dimensions permits a long life as refinishing the solid material is not limited as it is in a laminated or composite wood product.

Hal Levin
hal.levin@buildingecology.com

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