How flooring impacts air quality and health

We all know “Safety First,” but the phrase “Health First” is a new important one coming out of the pandemic. What does that have to do with flooring? Indoor air quality is a critical component to health – not just in terms of reducing virus spread, but also in reducing indoor air pollution. Poor quality flooring or poorly maintained flooring can be pollution sources, guilty of increasing health risks and decreasing productivity and measures of well-being for the people in the building.

Thankfully “clean” flooring — in two respects — takes care of this issue. A regular floor-care maintenance program can ensure particulates are not sitting and setting, polluting the air. Also, non-toxic flooring products have become a big priority for top flooring manufacturers in recent years. Top suppliers are seeking certification as “clean” by third parties such as Greenguard and WELL, which confirm low chemical emissions.

Several controlled studies illustrate the issue of flooring and indoor air quality. Here’s a link to one that shows a significant decrease in productivity and job satisfaction in the workforce, where the pollution source was a 20-year-old, dirty carpet…that they couldn’t even see.

Poor quality resilient flooring can cause plasticizers and phthalates to get into the air, causing asthma and airway inflammation. Here’s an article on that from the journal, Nature.

A great source of information on indoor air pollution is the Healthy Buildings initiative at Harvard’s T.H. Chan School of Public Health.

Our GP Flooring team is well-versed in floor-care maintenance and the highest quality products. We know how flooring impacts air quality and health, so please let us know if you have any questions or if we can help improve the health of your facility.