Dangers may lurk in 'new house smell'

Pictured is a recycled door and timber cabinets. Photo / Janna Dixon

What if products in New Zealand's 1.6 million houses were making people sick?

That is the claim of Auckland eco-house designer Jette de Jong of Ebode, who has raised safety questions about new ceiling and wall insulation, bathroom vanity units, floors, kitchen bench tops and cabinets.

These products can all emit chemicals and gases, she claims, which can cause health problems.

"They are associated with cancer risks, headaches, general feelings of ill health, watery eyes, coughing, wheezing and [are] not good for people with asthma," she said.

Dangerous substances such as formaldehyde are emitted for up to two years after the products are installed in houses, and she advises people to avoid at all costs. That "new" house smell could be dangerous.

"These products are like asbestos but this won't be known until many years into the future," she said, citing at least one builder who refused to work with medium-density fibreboard (MDF).

Fletcher Building, New Zealand's dominant housing-product manufacturer and distributor, dismissed her claims, saying that although formaldehyde was certainly in its products, glasswool insulation was in millions of homes globally and both that and MDF were safe.

De Jong, whose Three Kings firm Ebode specialises in sustainable housing, advises clients against installing MDF and glass insulation, even though the board is present in almost all of New Zealand's houses.

Floors, kitchens, bathrooms, wardrobes, desks and other products use MDF, an engineered wood product made of wood particles adhered under high temperature and pressure to form a solid board.

But carpenters and others cutting MDF have to use special breathing protection and are advised that sufficient concentrations can lead to health risks even several months after manufacture. They are warned that urea formaldehyde could cause irritation to eyes and lungs.

Pink Batts got a massive Government boost with the Warm Up New Zealand: Heat Smart campaign.

But Ebode specialises in only natural wood products such as poplar, macrocarpa and pine in kitchen and bathroom fittings, and wool insulation.

"Wool insulation even performs well when it's wet. But what happens to those new kitchens? They only last eight to 10 years because the manufacturers want you to buy another new one. It's just shrink-wrapped PVC and melamine, which turns into something like Weet-Bix when it's wet. It doesn't decompose because of all the chemicals," says De Jong.

"Don't rush out and buy a new kitchen: you'll make yourself sick. Look at the protective clothing people wear to manufacture or install glass wool insulation or MDF - special suits, masks, protective breathing gear. That gives you an idea how unsafe it is."

Highly volatile resins, adhesives and glues used to make MDF released gases for at least two years and fibreglass batts were likely to contain formaldehyde, which performed badly - especially in New Zealand's more humid areas, she said.

De Jong says she is not singling out Fletcher products. Pink Batts was researched by Ebode because it was the most widely used product of this type, she said.

"As a result of the research, we decided not to use fibreglass insulation at all. There are health and safety issues for the installers and performance issues in New Zealand's humid climate. MDF and Pink Batts are just two of a large number of building and finishing products available and in common use in New Zealand today that contain formaldehyde and an array of other volatile organic compounds [VOCs].

"While research has been done on many of these products individually to prove that the levels of VOCs used in that material are safe, when combined with other materials containing the same, or a mixture of different chemicals, it is nigh on impossible to assess or predict the potential health risks.

"For this reason, we prefer to eliminate these types of materials from Ebode homes wherever possible, and we do extensive in-house research on all products we use."

Philip King, Fletcher's investor relations manager, said there were solid rebuttals to De Jong's claims.

MDF had been used in New Zealand and around the world for more than 35 years and it is manufactured using wood and a formaldehyde adhesive.

"The wood panels industry and adhesive manufacturers have continuously reformulated and refined this adhesive so that the amount of added formaldehyde in MDF is virtually non-existent. The level of available formaldehyde in MDF is now more difficult to measure since it is similar to the level in the natural wood from which the product is made," said King.

"The New Zealand wood panels industry has established self-regulating standards for formaldehyde in MDF based on globally accepted specifications.

"Finished MDF products are often surface-laminated with impermeable finishes that provides further assurance that formaldehyde levels can be reduced in confined spaces.

"All glasswool insulation manufactured by members of the Insulation Council of Australia and New Zealand [Icanz] are bound with a resin that contains formaldehyde, although during the curing process this resin is burned off in the high temperatures.

"In 2004, Icanz testing of bonded glasswool and rockwool insulation products used in both residential and commercial settings indicated that the final product contains only trace amounts of formaldehyde and poses little to no known health risk," said King.

"This is backed up by testing done in the US by their Consumer Products Safety Commission."