Do You Need a Flooring Which Has Low Environmental Impact Over Its Lifetime?

Indoor Air Comfort (Gold) certification provides confirmation for a designer or end user that a product fulfills low product emission requirements. This signifies a product’s focus on quality and contribution to a healthy indoor environment and is a certification available with selected Sherwin-Williams products.

Product testing by Eurofins establishes "Indoor Air Comfort" (IAC) certification and is a well-established tool to show compliance of a product with low VOC emissions criteria, as set out in Europe on two levels:

A standard level "Indoor Air Comfort - certified product" shows compliance with emissions criteria of all legal specifications issued by authorities in the European Union and its Member States.

Higher level "Indoor Air Comfort GOLD - certified product" shows additional compliance of product emissions with the criteria of many of the voluntary specifications issued by most relevant eco-labels and similar specifications in the EU and requirements for sustainable building certifications. Therefore certified products are those with the best-in-class low emissions, thus good for indoor air quality.

The Sherwin-Williams FasTop polyurethane cement range is a modern product achieving exemplary results with Air Comfort Gold which confirms its contribution as a building product to a healthy indoor environment. FasTop uses chemistry which achieves a balance to maximise performance and sustainability. The formulation includes a resin which is an oil derivative, and a resin which is a natural plant oil, these are used with fillers, including silica sand and cement. This complicated chemistry uses a variety of raw materials with different degrees of sustainability and is carefully engineered to create an extremely strong and robust material that is also non-taint and low odour making it a food industry-approved material. When it is transported around the world, it is classed as non-hazardous because of the materials in its composition. 

Requirements for volatile organic compounds (VOC) product emissions include the following programs, amongst others, for Air Comfort certification.

Indoor Air Comfort GOLD:

• Belgian regulation
• French VOC label, A+ class
• German regulation, AgBB and ABG requirements
• Italian CAM Edilizia
• BREEAM
•  LEED (ACP)
• WELL Building
• SKA rating (UK)

This certification helps to promote low-emitting products and shows compliance with all relevant VOC-related requirements in Europe (governmental and voluntary). Indoor Air Comfort Gold certificates are directly accepted as proof from programs for sustainable buildings like BREEAM international and LEED.

Benefits of Air Comfort:

• Confirmation products do not pose a health risk to your customers.
• You know you are using Best-In-Class products for low indoor air pollution.
• Assurance that products comply with all regulations on VOC emissions in any European country and conform to other private labels as well.
• Confidence that products comply with requirements for sustainable buildings according to LEED, BREEAM international, BREEAM NOR, DGNB, Well Building and Italian CAM Edilizia.
• Indoor Air Comfort Gold has the lowest limit values in Europe and makes this the Best-in-class label.
• Third-party certification secures product quality.
• Management has better control over their own production (important for different sites in different countries).
• Retailers or private label owners can require Indoor Air Comfort (Gold) from their suppliers for their own brand protection → they have better (independent) control over their supplier through a Eurofins company,