California CDPH Standard Method "Section 01350"

California Standard Section 01350 Specification (Feb 2010 version 1.1) is the most popular US standard for evaluating and restricting VOC emissions indoor air. Developed in California, more and more rating systems are referring to CA Section 01350. The latest revision occurred in February 2010.

Here you can see the changes of 2010 version compared to 2004 version. And please see here the earlier version as of 2004 to which reference still is made for LEED and for FloorScore. And see a list of allowable concentrations.

Showing compliance with CA DPHS Standard Practice Section 01350 will fulfil indoor air emissions criteria of:

• Collaborative for High Performance Schools (CHPS)
• Indoor Advantage Gold™ certification
• FloorScore label for low emission resilient and hard floorings
• Several LEED Indoor Environmental Quality criteria.

Testing and evaluation

Emission chamber tests are performed for VOCs and aldehydes after a 10 days storage period, after (in total) 11, 12 and 14 days. Test results are calculated for two reference rooms: A school class room and an open-plan office room, with defined temperature, relative humidity and ventilation.

The resulting air concentrations then are rated against 35 Chronic Reference Exposure Levels (CRELs) published by the California Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment. Assuming that other products in an office or classroom may be additional sources of VOCs, CDPH Section 01350 compliance requires any products not to exceed one-half of the allowable concentration limits. For a comparison of these CREL values with European limit values for VOC, please click here. In reality only some 20 of the VOCs with assigned CREL can be imagined as being emitted from construction products or furniture.

CDPH standard method "section 01350" requires testing of TVOC. Different from all other regions in the world, TVOC is defined as the toluene equivalent of all VOCs in the range between n-pentane (n-C5) and n-heptadecane (n-C17). Even though TVOC shall be tested, there is no limit value for TVOC. Together with the very short list of limit values, this is the major shortcut of this low VOC specification. Excessive emissions of other VOCs than those with CREL limit values would not hinder from being in compliance with CPDH Section 01350 specification.

Comparison of EMICODE, AgBB/DIBt, Section 01350

A comparison between EMICODE - Blue Angel - AgBB/DIBt - CDPH Section 01350 (2010) is available in English and in German.

Another comparison between limit values of AgBB, GUT, Blue Angel and CDPH Section 01350 was made available by GUT both in English and in German. It clearly shows that requirements of CDPH Section 01350 are much weaker than European requirements.

Testing services

Eurofins Product Testing laboratories in California and in Denmark are ISO 17025 accredited and SCS approved for CA Section 01350 testing, and listed on CDPH homepage.

Please click here for details of Section 01350 specification.

Contact to VOC Testing Laboratories

Please see here contact information of Eurofins VOC testing laboratories in Europe, China and Japan:
www.eurofins.com/voc-contacts.