In the area of paints and coatings, it is not only the topic that must be explicitly considered, what are the colors made of. Which components, keyword full declaration, what do the plasticizers, the binders release into the room? With paints and coatings, if you like, you can work and act just as healthily the other way around, by using coatings that manage to exclude the previously mentioned radon contamination by means of a floor coating, for example, that the radon limits that are harmful to health in the long term are pushed down.

Simply because of a thin coating on the floor, even in this case visually imperceptible, the coating actively contributes to a significant health-promoting, spatial situation. Because of these large areas, especially when it comes to floor coatings, it is also very important to ensure that the products used have as low emissions as possible. Although I have already said in advance, many of these pollutants cannot be smelled. You smell low-emission floors relatively often when you enter various schools and various institutions and you get an unpleasant smell that comes relatively often from floor coverings that are not exactly that, low in emissions.

It would certainly be interesting from time to time to make a building biology report as to whether the limits are still being met here at all when it is actually already noticeable in the nose. The whole thing goes so far, with paints and coatings on the last wafer-thin layer in a wide variety of product classes and product groups.

If we look at the materiality of parquet, for example, there is now a fairly wide range of protective coatings, be they paints, glazes, oils. Very different quality in terms of health aspects. There are companies that focus so much on this and say that a very, very important element of our wooden and parquet floors is this wafer-thin top protective layer, and it is also very important to us to protect the natural material wood, but that in turn with purely natural materials from beeswax to natural coloring materials.

It is relatively easy to find the providers here. I have heard the argument over and over again that the price is decisive again, that perhaps at this point too I also see it as a great responsibility of us planners, of you, who advise the building owners, to also sensitize whether the few euros saved per square meter are valuable under the long-term effects that perhaps a slightly more expensive material may or may not have on health.

If building owners manage to raise awareness, in the vast majority of cases, this one-time additional price is off the table relatively quickly. Because the impact is significantly, significantly longer.