AgBB eval­u­a­tion scheme in Prod­uct Cat­e­go­ry Rules

The Insti­tut Bauen und Umwelt (IBU) updates the state­ments on the health assess­ment of con­struc­tion prod­ucts in its pro­gramme rules and incor­po­rates the AgBB eval­u­a­tion scheme 2018 into its Prod­uct Cat­e­go­ry Rules (PCRs).

The Ger­man Com­mit­tee for Health-relat­ed Eval­u­a­tion of Build­ing Prod­ucts (AgBB), which rep­re­sents the Fed­er­al Insti­tute for Mate­ri­als Research and Test­ing (BAM), the Fed­er­al Insti­tute for Risk Assess­ment (BfR), the con­fer­ence of con­struc­tion min­is­ters, the Fed­er­al Envi­ron­ment Agency and the Ger­man insti­tute for con­struc­tion tech­nol­o­gy (DIBt) among oth­ers, has pub­lished a new eval­u­a­tion scheme. The AgBB’s mis­sion is to devel­op the basis for build­ing reg­u­la­tions to pro­tect against indoor health prob­lems. The cur­rent ver­sion has been valid since August 2018; the pre­vi­ous ver­sion will remain valid for a tran­si­tion­al phase until mid-2019.

The AgBB’s eval­u­a­tion scheme is the deter­min­ing stan­dard for the test­ing and health assess­ment of volatile organ­ic com­pounds emit­ted from con­struc­tion prod­ucts. “It has pri­mar­i­ly been updat­ed in order to imple­ment the require­ments of the har­monised, hor­i­zon­tal Euro­pean test stan­dard DIN EN 16516”, explained Dr. Oliv­er Jann, mem­ber of the coun­cil of experts for the IBU. This stan­dard spec­i­fies the test con­di­tions in more detail in order to increase the admis­si­bil­i­ty and repro­ducibil­i­ty of the mea­sure­ment of volatile organ­ic com­pounds emit­ted from con­struc­tion prod­ucts. In addi­tion, it intro­duces the sen­so­ry test­ing of con­struc­tion prod­uct emis­sions as a new cri­te­ri­on. The new table has the fol­low­ing con­tent and is incor­po­rat­ed into the PCRs in accor­dance with the 2018 AgBB eval­u­a­tion scheme:

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