The Theory of Nothing

What the heck is a VOC?

What the heck is a VOC?

You may have heard about this in articles from the EPA (Environmental Protection Agency) or even OSHA (Occupational Safety and Health Administration). A VOC is a volatile organic compound, essentially what we chemists call an organic solvent. A VOC is a solvent that has a high vapor pressure that results from either evaporation or sublimation (goes from solid directly into gas).

The US government and many other governments regulate what chemicals are allowed into the atmosphere because they constitute a health or safety hazard. The EPA is concerned about the health aspect because many VOC's are poisonous or carcinogenic (cause cancer). OSHA is more interested in VOC's as hazards to workers in industries that work or produce organic solvents. Besides being poisonous, some VOC's are flammable and will explode under certain circumstances (they have a low flash point).

The EPA is also interested in the home use of VOC containing products because they are typically used indoors. Spray can products, such as paints, cleaning products, and hair sprays, once used VOC's that are now forbidden.

A list of VOC's that are forbidden in products include: Benzene, Methylene Chloride, many fluorocarbons, and Methyl teriary-Butyl ether to name of few. Some of the most egregious VOC's include Formaldehyde and Carbon Tetrachloride, which are carcinogens.
Many products, especially paints and other coating products strive to be VOC compliant. In other words they don't contain VOC's. They do this by formulating their products using water-based systems. Water is volatile but it can't hurt us. We're essentially water bags.

I know first hand about this because as a chemist I had to convert products that involved VOC's into water-based products, and I can assure you that it wasn't easy. In my case it was a dye solution that used solvent soluble dyes. I had to find equivalent water-soluble dyes and then make sure that they could do the same dying job that the solvent-based dyes did.

Adhesives are another commercial line that have been made VOC free or low VOC. Chlorofluorocarbons that were once used in spray cans caused ozone depletion, but they've been replaced by propane and butane. However, what's in the can has to be VOC free. That's a big problem for chemists, but for the most part, most can-spray products are VOC free.

You might recall that some women suffered burns using these spray products on their hair while smoking. After some lawsuits, the manufacturers soon changed their products.

One class of fluorocarbons, namely perflurocarbons, have the unique ability to dissolve gases, such as oxygen, and are thought to be useful for breathing under high pressure, such as a deep water diving. In other words, your lungs would be filled up with a perflurocarbon liquid with dissolved oxygen. Although, perflurocarbons are generally nontoxic, this breathing idea is questionable (there are issues) even though they are not ozone depleting. By the way, this idea has been proposed for deep space missions.

Another reason that VOC's have been banned in products is because of contamination of ground water, especially by water soluble VOC's. These include Chloroform, Chlorinated solvents like Methylene Chloride, and gasoline hydrocarbons.

The most important thing to get from this is that VOC's can be dangerous to us humans, and they are gradually being removed from products that we use in the home as well as in the work place.

Thanks for reading.