EPDs and HPDs

The overall goal of an Environmental Product Declaration, EPD®, is to provide relevant, verified and comparable information about the environmental impact of goods and services. This encourages scientifically based, fair choices and stimulates the potential for market driven continuous environmental improvements.

Altro supports the EPD initiative and has collaborated with the European Resilient Flooring Manufacturers’ Institute to create an open and transparent EPD representative of our flooring products.

Altro has Product Specific Type III EPDs for the majority of our sheet vinyl flooring products. An EPD is also available for our Altro Whiterock Wall Cladding. See below and click on the links to download the EPD of the product you are interested in.

 

Floors

• Altro Atlas 40
• Altro Aquarius
• Altro Cantata
• Altro Classic 25
• Altro Marine 20
• Altro Operetta 
• Altro Orchestra
• Altro Serenade
• Altro Stronghold 30
• Altro Symphonia
• Altro Reliance 25
• Altro Walkway 20
• Altro Wood
• Altro Wood Acoustic 
• Altro Wood Comfort
• Altro XpressLay

Walls

• Altro Whiterock, Altro Whiterock Matte, Altro Puraguard

The purpose behind the Health Product Declaration is to provide a public statement of product content and the health hazards associated with exposure to its individual ingredients. It is intended to represent a way to gain greater transparency into the ingredients that make up building products and assess which of those are potentially harmful to people.  The intent of this initiative is good but the execution is flawed as there are many problems with HPDs in their current form.

Not the whole truth

HPDs don’t explain the full story behind ingredients.  For example:Some flagged ingredients may be hazardous in their raw material ingredient form but perfectly safe in their final, bonded form. Some chemicals exist in different forms. One form may be hazardous whereas another form of the same chemical may be non-hazardous.  HPD makes no distinction.  

HPDs and misleading lists

The current version of the Health Product Declaration (HPD) requires the disclosure of ingredients listed on one or more of over 30 separate lists, most developed for very different goals than exposure warning.  As an example; One of the lists includes the EPA’s TSCA Work Plan Chemicals List.  This is list of chemicals determined for an EPA evaluation and about the appropriateness for an EPA risk assessment.  This risk assessment has not been performed and yet these chemicals are included on the list.  Other HPD lists identify chemicals for ecological impacts (i.e., global warming, ozone depletion) which are not related to human exposures from building materials and are covered in Environmental Product Declarations. Lists conflict with authoritative bodies such as International Agency for Research on Cancer and the Environmental Protection Agency. 

For a copy of our HPDs please download the documents at the links below:
Altro Atlas 40, Altro Stronghold 30, Altro Marine 20 HPD 
Altro Cantata HPD
Altro Walkway 20, Altro Reliance 25, Altro Symphonia, Altro Aquarius, Altro XpressLay HPD
Altro Operetta, Altro Orchestra, Altro Serenade HPD
Altro Symphonia HPD
Altro Tungsten HPD
Altro Woods HPD
Altro Zodiac HPD