Intervention
Low-emission materials
Part of: Source control
Also: low-emitting materials, low-VOC materials, certified low-emission products
Building products and furnishings selected because they release less into indoor air than the conventional alternative — boards, adhesives, paints, floor coverings and wallpapers certified against an emission class or a labelling scheme measured in a test chamber.
What it is
Choosing a low-emission material is source control applied at the moment of purchase: the emission is prevented rather than removed later by ventilation or filtration. What makes a material low-emission is not a claim on the packaging but a measured value — the concentration the product releases in a standardised chamber test, compared against the threshold of a class or scheme. The thresholds themselves, for wood-based panels, are collected in the formaldehyde emission limits table.
What has been measured
In a study of children with atopic dermatitis, rooms papered with a wallpaper made without added emissions were compared with rooms papered in polyvinyl chloride wallpaper. The fall in symptom score was greater in the low-emission group, but the difference was not statistically significant (F-0027).
What it does not do
It does not clean the air that is already in the room, and it does not compensate for a room that is not ventilated. A low-emission material emits less than its alternative; it does not emit nothing, and enough of it in a small, closed room still raises the concentration. Nor does a certificate cover what happens to the product later: adhesives, coatings and the way a board is cut and finished can all change what the installed surface releases.
What the studies report
| Linked to | Effect | Population | Study design | Source | Checked |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Volatile organic compounds (VOCs) | — | children · home | randomised controlled trial of wallpaper replacement, eight weeks | F-0027 Kim et al. Effects of indoor air pollutants on atopic dermatitis (2016) | machine |
Each row is one Finding — a sentence as printed in one study, recorded with its page in the Coridum Knowledge Base. Follow the Finding number for the exact wording and the citation. Checked says who verified the row: machine means every automatic check passed and the surrounding text was read; person means someone read the sentence in the document. Rows are re-checked by a person over time. The studies are curated in the Coridum Knowledge Base; the reading of them together is a Claim, shown separately.
In the literature
- Kim et al. Effects of indoor air pollutants on atopic dermatitis (2016). International journal of environmental research and public health. doi:10.3390/ijerph13121220 CKB 0611
Studies in the Coridum Knowledge Base in which this term is used. The definition follows standard usage in WHO, ISO and textbook sources; it is not quoted from these papers.
CKB = document number in the Coridum Knowledge Base, our curated library of peer-reviewed studies. Follow the DOI for the original paper.
Cite this page
Coridum Research. Low-emission materials. Coridum Knowledge G-0103, 8 September 2026. https://coridum.com/k/G-0103/