ABSTRACT
Vinyl chloride-Vinyl acetate copolymer (VC-VAc) plasticized with Di-octyl phthalate (DOP) is the main formulation used for vinyl flooring materials. It is suspected that during the service life of vinyl flooring, and due to fungi attack, DOP degraded and releases volatile organic compounds. For that the microorganism’s resistance of different formulations was evaluated according to ASTM procedures that comprise visual examination of fungal growth and the mechanical properties assessment of the inoculated specimens with a mixture of five different fungi. The inoculation period was 28 days at 28 ± 1°C and 95 ± 2% relative humidity. In addition the thermal properties of the different formulations are evaluated before and after inoculation using differential scanning calorimetry (DSC). All VC-VAc controls and blends with different plasticizers were susceptible to fungi attack in a lower or higher extent depending on each formulation composition. In addition, surprisingly, the results show that the influence of fungi on the different formulations is comparable to the effects of humidity and temperature.
