Sponsor:
Deutsches Institut für Bautechnik (DIBt)
Realisation:
Hydrotox GmbH (project management)
Federal Institute for Materials Research and Testing (BAM)
Project duration:
01/2015 -04/2016
Summary
So far the requirements for construction products regarding health and environmental protection have not been harmonised in Europe. Therefore, the health and environmental safety of reactive fire protection coatings have to be proven within the framework of the general building authority approval according to Building Regulations B, Part 1 and the European Technical Approval Guidelines ETAG 018-1 or ETAG 018-2.
Currently, only the formulation of construction products is evaluated in the approval process according to level 1 of the “DIBt principles for evaluating the effects of construction products on soil and groundwater”. Since construction products can indeed contain critical ingredients that are released in contact with water, a concept for the leaching behaviour and evaluation of leachates with ecotoxicological methods was developed in this project.
For this purpose, specimens of three representative reactive fire protection systems with different compositions according to ETAG, consisting of a steel corpus, a primer, an adhesion promoter, the reactive component and optionally a top coat were prepared according to the manufacturer's instructions. The fire protection systems of the type "X" are designed for all applications and thus may also be exposed to direct weathering. Subsequently, leaching tests were carried out with the selected test specimens according to DIN EN 16105 and CEN / TS 16637-2 and the eluates obtained were evaluated in the algae-, daphnia-, bioluminescence-, and fish-egg tests to determine their ecotoxicological effects. Additionally, umu-tests were performed to evaluate genotoxicity effects and the biodegradability of the organic ingredients of the eluates were determined.
The final report can be downloaded here.
Contact person at Hydrotox GmbH
Dr. Ines Heisterkamp , Dr. Stefan Gartiser,
heisterkamp(at)hydrotox.de, Tel: +49-(0)761-45512-23