Vinyl and laminate toxic?

[Longcovid21]

Im in the process of replacing downstairs carpets with something more dog friendly. I was planning on vinyl but saw some website about its toxic elements. Same with laminate. I can't afford and don't want ceramic tiles or real wood. Am I being paranoid about chemicals?

Yes.

I'm pretty sure it would be against consumer laws for anyone to sell toxic floors. We are completely renovating our house at the moment and so have been researching different floor types and I've never come across this - where did you read about it?

Off gassing yes. I wouldn’t use them myself.

floortechie.com/is-vinyl-flooring-toxic/

One of many articles

I remember looking into this a few years ago. It took me a while to establish that those articles were American and referred to the cheaper styles of vinyl available there.

I think these cheaper, heavily toxic ones are banned in the EU and hopefully still are here.

While the ones here do off-gas, they aren't as toxic as those articles suggest. Most carpets, paint, memory foam mattresses, furniture, etc can off-gas, so it seems hard to avoid.

Thank you hedgehog lurker that is reassuring....

We bought our vinyls in advance and leave outside, under cover to off gas for a few weeks before fitting in the house. We fit our own but you could just buy it before arranging fitting if you have somewhere to leave it

I used to sell vinyl flooring
It’s fine

@Hoppinggreen isn't that what a sales person would say 😁

I read similar about off gassing with vinyl and LTV flooring @Longcovid21 - it was mainly US articles but iirc the products were manufactured in China. And it did seem fairly alarming the range of health issues potentially linked to it.

Karndean discuss VOCs on their website and make quite a big point to state that their levels are lower than required safety levels - but that assumes those safety levels have all the necessary data (not sure what if any longitudinal studies are done on this kind of thing). So who knows if the levels that are deemed to be safe are - or will be shown to be in the future.

So I'm wary.

I'd rather choose tiles or wood - or natural wool carpets - I guess if you leave in place vinyl that's been there for years that's better, as I think the off gassing reduces over time. But then you end up with tatty vinyl.

Link to Karndeans page on it -

www.karndean.com/en/floors/about-us/corporate-social-responsibility/environmental-commitment

A slightly different thing, but we bought a fairly cheap rug about a year ago made from synthetic fibres on eBay because we needed a stopgap in our new house. It's smelled a bit chemically but we aired it for several days and then put it down in our office.

It gave both myself and DH really bad headaches so much so that we had to get rid of it. So I do think it is a thing just from my own personal experience. And that has made me even more wary about chemicals and their impact in enclosed spaces where the off gassing can build up.

[quote Longcovid21]@Hoppinggreen isn't that what a sales person would say 😁[/quote]
well I’m still saying it and I don’t sell it any more.
Plus I survived