The Pharos Project is a project of the Healthy Building Network. HBN is:

In Vermont:
Melissa Coffin, Bill Walsh

In California:
Tom Lent

In Washington, DC:
Larry Kilroy, Sarah Gilberg, Sarah Pickell, Susan Sabella

In Maine:
Jim Vallette

PRODUCT PATENT INFO RAISES QUESTIONS

 

Today we released five new products for display in the Pharos Project. Unlike the many forward-thinking companies who provided information to the database upon request, these products’ manufacturers declined to participate in Pharos, which forced us to rely upon publicly available information.

Congoleum sells a commercial sheet flooring product with polyvinyl chloride (PVC), called Flor-Ever Plus. Their website description of the product fails to mention the word ‘vinyl’ (you have to dig deep into their commercial literature to see that). And it barely describes any of the other ingredients, including plasticizers and other chemicals in the flooring’s crucial backing material. Congoleum simply calls the backing “White Shield felt.”

A search of patent records uncovered ingredients of Congoleum’s vinyl sheet backing. As Pharos subscribers will see, “White Shield felt” backing is a conglomeration of resin binders (usually styrene-butadiene latex), PET, fillers and antioxidants, which may include Bisphenol-A.

Similarly Armstrong’s website touts the renewable ingredients of its' new Bio-Based Tile (BBT) but offers little more than generalizations about the ingredients of this resilient composition. But it revealed much more in patent applications recently published by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office.

Armstrong's Bio-Based Tile patent contemplates up to 10 percent of recycled content (mainly post-industrial limestone, although post-consumer PET is a possibility) and up to 9 percent biobased material, such as corn and saw dust. Vital particulars about what Armstrong is currently selling, and what they plan to sell in the future, remain unknown. Its' renewable polyester flooring base layer potentially includes epoxies, fly ash, isocyanates, stabilizers, and even recycled urea formaldehyde.

We hope that the information we are sharing on Pharos will empower you, our users, to ask the right questions of these manufacturers. To this end, please have a look at the new products released today, which also include resilient flooring from LG Floors (NatureLife) and American ZBiltrite (Mirra), and CertainTeed’s CertaPro Commercial AcoustaTherm Batt insulation (Not a subscriber yet? Sign up today.).

Jim Vallette is a researcher with the Pharos Project and the Healthy Building Network.

Comments

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Fairfax County INOVA Hospital systems is in the throes of planning a healthplex in Lorton, VA How can I get them to pay attention to all of the important information that the Pharos project does? The Pharos project fullfils a great need and the word about this web site is vitally important to all consumers to know that it exists! Keep up the great research!

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