[Emissions from building products and investigation of their toxicity with the bioluminescence inhibition test].

The investigation of building products in test chambers contains so far only analytical and sensory measurements. In this paper, first experiments for the direct testing of the acute toxicity of building product emissions with the bioluminescence inhibition test are presented. The test specimen was a solvent-free dispersion paste for gluing carpets. Two tests with different air change rates were performed in a 1 m3 stainless steel test chamber. The emissions were concentrated at uniform timesteps in impinger-bottles and measured with the bioluminescence inhibition test. At the same time the concentrations of the emissions in the test chamber were measured both with charcoal adsorbent tubes (carbon disulphide desorption) and with tenax tubes (thermal desorption). The results of the bioluminescence inhibition test show, that the decrease of the toxicity over a period of 28 days is far lower at a low air change rate than at a higher air change rate. We also found, that from the multitude of the emitted substances the toxicity for the luminescence bacteria was only caused by Ethanol-[2-(2-butoxyethoxy)]-acetate.