Question from john
My wife has MCS and we are in the process of finding a “safe” house, both insisde and outside. We think we have found a house that fits most of our criteria, except for one area. The homeowner installed pre-finished hardwood floors in part of the home 6 months ago. We’ve heard that this should be OK since the finish is baked on. We were in the home for about 45 minutes and my wife did not detect anything. Her sense of smell is accute and she usually detects things immediately if it is going to bother her. What do you think? Opinions are welcome. Thank you.
Debra’s Answer
I think pre-finished hardwood floors are fine. I’ve never had any problem with them.
Are you making the statement that all engineered woods are bad?
At the time I wrote this post some years ago, yes, that’s what I was saying.
Recently I’ve heard there are some engineered woods that may be OK but I haven’t checked them out yet.
Any updates on which (if any) pre-engineered hardwoods might be safe?
No update.
There is some confusion here. Debra is correct in saying that solid prefinished hardwood flooring is safe. If the solid flooring has been finished with UV cured acrylic, which is the current industry standard, they will not contain added formaldehyde and the finish will not emit VOCs because the light cured acrylic finish does not contain solvents like the traditional urethane finish.
However…. engineered hardwood flooring can also be very safe. As an example Eddie Bauer Floors line of engineered flooring and product from some other US manufacturers, does not contain any added formaldehyde glues. Get an engineered hardwood floor rather than laminate. Less glue in the assembly because good quality engineered hardwood uses a plywood backer and laminate uses a pressboard backer. Pick a product that has low or no added formaldehyde. Eddie Bauer Floors and some other good US manufactures offer this kind of product with no added formaldehyde glues and a UV cured acrylic matte finish which does not contain solvents and so does not emit VOCs.
I blame the confusion about the safety of engineered hardwood floors on the big box stores and the Lumber Liquidators who do sell engineered hardwood floor with pressboard backers under the “engineered” moniker or as “click and lock”. Also if you go really “cheap” on price, beware, manufacturers make products less expensive by cutting corners and using cheap formaldehyde glues and solvent based finishes. You can be economical but you really have to be wary at the low end of the market. Engineered is often a better solution than solid flooring because it is more stable, often more reasonably priced especially for wide plank, and it is more environmentally friendly because it uses less of the precious hardwood to get the same coverage.
I think it isn’t confusion so much as engineered floors in the past have not been like the newer engineered floors you are describing. We just need to catch up.
I’m happy you are educating the public about this because otherwise we wouldn’t know the difference.
Well….I have very much to say about this! All pre-finished hardwood floors are not safe! I consulted this blog, reading that engineered floors are usually safe, and made a purchase of an entire house full of engineered hardwood floor that turned out to have extremely high levels of formaldehyde! The purchase was made from a company that manufactures their own flooring in China and only sells it online. On their website it claimed that their product was even CARB compliant! We bought the flooring and from the moment we opened the box we could smell the formaldehyde! I am not chemically sensitive, just concerned about toxicity, so it didn’t make me sick. But I contacted the company, who told me that it wasn’t a problem, so I went ahead and installed it, but I also had some pieces of wood tested for formaldehyde. The results showed that the flooring had twice the legal limit of formaldehyde for CARB compliance. (CARB is a standard for formaldehyde emissions in California, where I live.) To the company’s credit, they were willing to refund my cost of the floor and all installation and removal costs. However it has been very unsettled to have one floor installed, removed, and then another one installed for our large family. What I do want to say it that one person on your site recommended Mannington Floors, and I should have listened to them. We couldn’t afford Kahrs, but Mannington has a line of flooring that is manufactured in a facility in the USA, not China, and that does not use formaldehyde at all in the manufacture of their floors. We picked that floor for our replacement floor and it has been very nice with no odor.COMMENT FROM DEBRA: Prefinished hardwood floors are safe. ENGINEERED floors are not, as you learned. Look for prefinished floors made with solid wood.
how do you get the wood tested for formaldehyde? thanks
You don’t need to get wood tested for formaldehyde. You just need to buy solid wood, not particleboard.
Wood products now come with a CARB rating that tells you the formaldehyde level.
I think I got confused because I think of engineered wood as “solid wood” as opposed to particle board. I read many things on your blog saying solid wood was good, and I knew kahrs and mannington were engineered, so I assumed they were the same. I’m sorry I didn’t read your blog enough to see all the negativity about engineered wood floors! It was a very difficult mistake to have made.