Environmental compatibility of bitumen waterproofing

The environmental compatibility of building materials has been gaining in importance during the last decades. In Germany standardised materials are not yet tested, but for new products the innoxiousness has to be proven. For this evaluation a concept is needed, that allows the definition of a limit value for a specific laboratory test. A proposal for such a concept was developed and is presented in this paper. The concept is based on a leaching test, which is used to determine the release of pollutants. Numerical transport simulations were performed to calculate the resulting impact on groundwater quality. Existing leaching data of polymer-modified bitumen coatings (PMB) showed that the release of pollutants is most likely not causing any harassment to the groundwater. But inorganic pollutants could not be evaluated due to a lack of data. Further research is needed here.