In renovated or completely new buildings, levels of indoor
air pollutant emissions from construction and building materials,
especially of VOCs, are often several orders of magnitude higher
than the VOC levels in buildings under normal use. The use of
small-scale environmental chambers with volumes ranging from
a few liters to a few cubic meters has been increasing. The
weakness of these traditional chamber techniques is that they can-not be used to investigate emissions from existing real building
structures. The emission of VOCs from a material in a real build-ing structure is affected not only by the material but also by the
environmental conditions and other surrounding materials. Sec-ondary emissions can develop under the influence of humidity,
ozone, UV-light, etc.. Hydrolysis reactions in the floor struc-ture (PVC/adhesive/casein containing leveling agents) can produce
2-ethylhexanol, butanol and ammonia[9]. Thus, the emission mea-sured on site can differ considerably from the emission measured
from a single material under laboratory conditions[10]. The impact
of the increased consciousness about indoor environment has cre-ated a demand for low-emitting (healthy) building materials, and
hence also for standardized methods to characterize and quantify
the VOC emissions from building materials and consumer products.
Furthermore, methods for easy source identification of potential
VOC emission from building materials on site and for their
tification are required