The Ministry of Environment has established a content standard of VOC in paint for the first time in Korea and will put it into force from coming July. The content standard of VOC was set up for low VOC, eco-friendly paint, which contains 5-7% less VOC than existing one, to be supplied.

The newly established standard is applied to paint for construction and car painting use that generates about 41 percent of the total VOC emissions in the metropolitan area. Accordingly it was urgent to manage the VOC emissions properly.

In particular, the entire amount of VOC emissions is emitted into the air because it is hardly possible to prevent VOC emissions generated during the course of painting through post-treatment measures. Therefore, setting up a content standard of VOC in paint is a more effective way than any other measures to lower VOC emissions.

Thanks to the standard, VOC emissions are expected to decrease by 8,000 tons in 2006 and by 20,000 tons from 2006.

VOC not only causes ozone pollution of cities in summer, but also affects the respiratory organs of the human and cause a nerve disorder. In addition, benzene and toluene among the 37 kinds of VOC are identified as cancer-causing substances.

The Ministry of Environment will continue to strengthen the content standard of VOC in paint so as to increase the use of low VOC, hi-solid paint. Ultimately, it plans to replace the use of fat-soluble paint with water-soluble one.

Along with such effort, MOE plans to create demand for low VOC paint from paint users to lower the VOC emissions while painting. To do so, it will disseminate information on low VOC paint and come up with incentives.