Attention Beijing Furniture: Exit if you don’t change water-based paint

Beijing recently issued five new local environmental protection standards, involving boilers, petrochemicals, furniture manufacturing and other industries. Among them, Beijing will implement the country's strictest furniture pollutant emission standards, which has attracted widespread attention. It is understood that the new standards have significantly reduced the maximum allowable emission concentration limits of benzene and particulate matter contained in wooden furniture. Once this regulation is implemented, it will not only improve the atmospheric environment, but will also be good news for consumers. Beijing recently issued the "Air Pollutant Emission Standards for the Wooden Furniture Manufacturing Industry", which puts forward control requirements for air pollutant emissions in the wooden furniture manufacturing industry.

Yan Yumei, director of the Science and Technology Standards Department of the Beijing Municipal Environmental Protection Bureau, said on the 10th that the standard will be implemented on July 1 this year and is currently the most stringent local environmental protection standard in China. "The "Air Pollutant Emission Standards for the Wooden Furniture Manufacturing Industry" for the first time proposes limits on the volatile organic compound content in raw and auxiliary materials in the emission standards, as well as process measures and management requirements. It embodies the whole-process comprehensive management and control concept of 'source control, process supervision, and terminal treatment'." The new emission standards require that during the wooden furniture manufacturing and production process, the maximum allowable emission concentration of air pollutants such as benzene, non-methane total hydrocarbons, and particulate matter emitted through the equipment exhaust pipe shall not exceed the prescribed limit; in addition, wood processing workshops and painting and polishing workshops also stipulate concentration limits for unorganized particulate matter emission monitoring points.

Zheng Zaihong, deputy director of the Pollution Prevention and Control Department of the Beijing Municipal Environmental Protection Bureau, revealed that one of the main purposes of formulating new emission standards is to promote the complete withdrawal of oil-based coatings from the market. According to data released by the China Coatings Industry Association, the total amount of volatile organic compounds (VOCs) emitted into the atmosphere by China's paint and coating industry every year is about 4.3 million tons, of which oil-based paints account for about 98% and water-based paints account for about 2%. Water-based paint has obvious environmental advantages. "Our current work is to promote enterprises to replace all organic solvent-based paints (oil-based paints) used in the past with water-based paints. If they do not change, they will completely withdraw from the market. According to the standard implementation date, the requirements of the second period will be implemented from January 1, 2017, that is, the use of organic solvent-based (oil-based) paint spraying processes in Beijing's furniture manufacturing industry will be prohibited." Water-based paint does not contain harmful substances such as formaldehyde, benzene, and xylene, and its current penetration rate in the EU coating industry has reached more than 90%.

However, because water-based paint has stricter technical and production process requirements and high costs, it is currently not popular in China’s domestic furniture industry. Zheng Zaihong revealed that currently less than 15% of furniture manufacturers in the industry use water-based paint. “Furniture produced using water-based paint is certainly better than oil-based paint in terms of the impact of VOC emissions on human health. Although we have vigorously promoted the use of water-based paint in the early stage, Our furniture industry has been doing this to replace highly toxic paints with low-toxicity organic solvent-based paints. For example, some paints that used to contain styrene have now been replaced. Even oil-based paints are less harmful to health, but water-based paints have lower health risks.” It is undoubtedly excellent news for consumers that furniture companies reduce or strictly prohibit the use of oil-based paints that are harmful to health. However, Zheng Zaihong reminded consumers that the current environmental protection department mainly monitors the production process. Therefore, not all wooden furniture sold on the Beijing market in the future will comply with the new emission standards.