Breathing Easier: Measuring Formaldehyde in Wood Construction Products

A woman and a man wearing lab coats look into a metal canister (formaldehyde emitter SRM) in a lab.

By Dustin Poppendieck, an environmental engineer in NIST's Energy and Environment Division

On August 29, 2005, I was starting my first semester teaching freshman environmental engineering majors at Humboldt State University in Arcata, California. At the exact same time, Hurricane Katrina hit Louisiana and Mississippi with 190 kph (120 mph) winds and a storm surge in excess of 6 meters (20 feet). Levees failed, flooding over 80% of New Orleans and many surrounding areas. This tragedy left over 1,800 people dead, many of whom had been trapped in their own homes. It took nearly six weeks for the water to recede, exposing over 130,000 destroyed housing units.

I spent the rest of the semester (and subsequent ones) discussing with my students the lessons that environmental engineers should learn from Katrina and its aftermath (levees, water treatment, mold, air testing, planning for disasters and more). Little did I know I would still be dealing with some of the issues revealed by Hurricane Katrina nearly 15 years later as a scientist at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST).