wood-interior

Background
The Nordic Timber Industry Associations in Finland, Norway and Sweden has recently agreed four common focus areas. One of the focus areas is “Wood interior products: Health impact and indoor air”.
The overall goal is to address issues related to interior use of wood. To achieve this, it is important to create documentation and information regarding use of wood interior products on health and indoor climate through research and disseminate the information to the appropriate stake holders.
Research has already been conducted among the Nordic research partners in collaboration with researchers in Austria and the UK (cf. Wood2New-project: www.wood2new.org) funded through the 7 Framework program. The project has given some promising results on interior use of wood on health and comfort. In particular, the results indicate that use of building materials form wood can improve indoor environments, but this effect is not yet properly quantified.
Therefore more documentation and plans for dissemination are needed. This is of special need, since prEN 16516 “Assessment of release of dangerous substances – Determination of emissions into indoor air” are in pipeline for implementation in the CEN-system.

Objectives
During the network project a report on state-of-the-art will be published based on current research results. It is of special interest to inform the end-user of the positive effects of use of wood. Results will be presented in a common (Nordic) open seminar in November 2018, NMBU will host a workshop on the topic in November 2018.
The network will connect researchers in the Nordic countries in the area of health impact and indoor environment using wood in interiors. Through the connection to the Nordic Wood Industry Associations, the network will ensure that the wood industry in all three countries will have the same updated knowledge and the possibility to coordinate the information to the end-users.