Anyone who has worked with MDF as a building material knows it probably isn’t that good for you. Memories of coughing up a wood-paste after doing all night workshop sessions at design school are all too vivid for me. Then it was off to a furniture factory where my old friend MDF literally made my skin crawl. It is a very functional material, you can make almost anything from it, but at what cost? It isn’t just the poor people who have to build your cabinets and shelves from MDF on a day to day basis. Once those products become part of your home the chemicals slowly leach out into your atmosphere and find their way into your lungs.

In 1987, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) classified formaldehyde as a probable human carcinogen under conditions of unusually high or prolonged exposure (1). Since that time, some studies of industrial workers have suggested that formaldehyde exposure is associated with nasal cancer and nasopharyngeal cancer, and possibly with leukemia. In 1995, the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) concluded that formaldehyde is a probable human carcinogen. However, in a reevaluation of existing data in June 2004, the IARC reclassified formaldehyde as a known human carcinogen (2).

The dangerous side-effects of formaldehyde (the binder used in varying amounts in almost all MDF) are making their way into the legislative arena. Lawsuits are beginning to pop up where companies are being held accountable for using irresponsible amounts of the chemical in their products. In the USA, FEMA (Federal Emergency Management Agency) is being hit with a monumental lawsuit for supplying to New Orleans hurricane victims 120,000 trailers with dangerous amounts of formaldehyde used in their construction.

If the hurricane victims prevail, the formaldehyde suit could rival other huge product-liability lawsuits, including those filed against asbestos and tobacco manufacturers, in the scope and size of awards.

More information can be found here: FEMA Trailer Formaldehyde Liabilty Suit On The Way @ Treehugger