Emissions of Volatile Organic Compounds from road marking paints

Regulations, definitions, and calculations related to emissions of Volatile Organic Compounds (VOC) from paints used for horizontal road markings (traffic paints) in North America and in European Union are different, which frequently makes simple comparisons impossible. To illustrate the dissimilarities, solvent packages of various exemplary paints that meet several normative requirements were compared for the nominal emissions according to different calculation procedures. For a unified assessment, volatile portions of the paints were evaluated based on Ozone Formation Potential (OFP). The analysis revealed that similar nominal VOC contents can lead to vastly different OFP, in an extreme case six times higher. Incongruously high OFP, which was calculated for emissions in Southern California despite strict limits can thus be explained. The provided calculations can be used by road administrators as a tool to demand materials with lowest environmental impact, by environmental researchers to pinpoint irregularities between declared and measured discharges, and can assist formulating chemists in selection of raw materials to prepare environmentally friendly road marking paints.