Question from Brenda
Hi Debra,
I had a bad reaction to Mohawk Smartstrand carpet after it was installed. They said it was green carpet plus and met the CRI guidelines. The adhesive in the backing of the carpet had a bitter odor to it. So we had it removed after having it for two weeks. My MSC is flared up big time. Then to add insult to injury my husband moped the plywood floor with vinger and water and that cut loose some more chemical problems for the last two weeks and I have been even more flared up. I have the windows open 24/7 to figure out what to do with this problem. It is cold outside too with snow. I did go to Menards and found what I thougt was a good prefinished oak wood floor by Great Lakes. It was Appalachian hardwood with a 50 year aluminum oxide finish warranty verfied sustanable based on data from US Forest Service. I thought that would solve the problem. I bought a bundle and took it out of the box to air out over night in a heated room. The next morning I woke up to a glue like smell odor in the wood and it make me very ill. This has been quite the ordeal going on since August.
Are there better prefinished woods than others. I had one of my friends who has severe MCS and she noticed the odor too. That was with just one bundle and I needed 13 more bundles to complete the flooring job if I were to have had it done. I talked with the floor layer and he said it was in the prefinish. He said when the company bakes on the prefinsih wood they pack it up immediately and doesn’t give much time to offgas. Now I don’t know what to do with this floor problem in my living room and my physical reaction to it. This is a dilema. If a person has a problem with prefinished floors what would be another option to consider? Thank-you.
Debra’s Answer
It’s been my experience that when you first open a box of prefinished hardwood flooring there can be an odor from the finish that is not 100% dried. Your installer is correct in that regard.
My experience has been that if I leave the flooring sitting outside in the sun for a day, it finishes drying and after that there is no problem. Heating the flooring also works.
It sounds to me like your body got really oversensitive with the other exposures. With enough heat to bake the finish, I feel confident the prefinish hardwood flooring will become nontoxic. In your current supersensitive state, you may still react to it.
I wouldn’t discard the idea of prefinished hardwood floors. I would suggest going someplace safe and letting your body calm down for a bit before making a final decision about this.
You could always use ceramic or porcelain tile floors, or stone, which would be even safer.
