Primer to green labels on carpets

When you decide to remodel your home, you face many considerations. For instance, how do you gauge which green labels to trust to ensure an optimally safe home—maintaining the highest quality indoor air and supporting the least wasteful companies. Here’s a primer focused on carpeting.

Why is there a green label for carpets? The simplest reason is that carpets, carpet pads and carpet adhesives that are considered eco-friendly need to help reduce volatile organic compounds (VOCs) and emissions and contribute to a decrease in landfill waste as companies commit to use recycled content. Many homebuyers want to replace old carpeting and replace it with low VOC carpets.

What’s so bad about VOCs? When did attention on the practices of carpeting companies begin?

That new carpet smell that you may have smelled at some point is a VOC called 4-phenylcyclohexene (4-PCH) and is a byproduct of a latex binder used to secure fibers to the backing.

In the 1990s, carpet manufacturers in an attempt to respond to panic about the toxicity of carpets, lowered the 4-PCH levels in latex. This also led, in 1992, to the Carpet and Rug Institute (CRI) launching its Green Label program to test carpets, cushions and adhesives to identify products that meet stringent criteria for low chemical emissions of VOCs.

The EPA states that VOC emissions from new carpet typically fall to very low levels within 48 to 72 hours after installation when well ventilated. Since people spend most of their time indoors, the quality of indoor air is very critical. Given that VOCs easily enter the air, short term exposure to high levels of VOCs can cause headaches, light-headedness, drowsiness, dizziness, eye and respiratory irritation, and nausea. Therefore, governmental health services and doctors have recommended minimizing exposure to these chemical when possible.

What label should you trust and what do they analyze for in their carpets?

CRI’s Green Label (GL) and Green Label Plus (GLP) indoor air quality testing and certification programs are trustworthy and are recognized by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the United States’ Green Building Council’s Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED). Additionally, GLP carpets are accepted by the American Lung Associations Health House program.[1]

CPI provides a list of the chemicals that the GLP independent testing program measures when testing carpet products, adhesive products and cushions.[2][3]  

They also provide the criteria they use.[4]

An icon with “CRI” inside a small green house will verify that the carpet passed CRI’s low emissions standards.

Additionally, to determine whether a product contains VOCs, be sure to check out the National Institute of Health's (NIH) website for information on a specific indoor household product.[5]

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[1] http://www.healthhouse.org/consumer/build.cfm

[2] http://www.carpet-rug.org/commercial-customers/green-building-and-the-environment/green-label-plus/carpet-and-adhesive.cfm

[3] http://www.carpet-rug.org/commercial-customers/green-building-and-the-environment/green-label-plus/cushion.cfm

[4] http://www.carpet-health.org/pdf/GreenLabelRequirements.pdf

[5] http://hpd.nlm.nih.gov/products.htm