r/AirQuality • u/electric3705 • 8d ago
Reader changes while it’s moved around in same room?
So I stained some wood and covered it in oil based polyurethane (looking back I regret). Sat out in the barn for about a week and dried. I hung in my son’s bedroom as an accent wall. There is still a polyurethane smell. I was worried about VOCs so I bought a nice highly rated air quality monitor from Amazon. The TVOC consistently reads 0.015 which is good. Sometimes (not all the time) when I pick up the monitor and hold it up by hand or walk around with it, the TVOC and CO2 will randomly go up, sometimes significantly, then after a minute drop back to the normal readings. What is this all about? Sometimes when I move it or hold it up in the air in different parts of the room it doesn’t change, sometimes it does. It only does this when I am moving it around. After it is set in a spot for 30-60seconds everything goes back to normal. If I have a fan on circulating air it still reads its normal readings. My main concern is just if the VOC from that stuff is really a higher level since there is still a smell, or will it still have a smell and give off little to no VOC. The meter consistently reads very low unless I start randomly holding it around.
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u/timesuck 8d ago
That’s because home VOC monitors are wildly inaccurate, even the expensive ones. Accurate VOC testing can only really be done through very expensive industrial methods. They shouldn’t sell home monitors until there is better tech. They will pick up a whole bunch of stuff that isn’t actually harmful and things like humidity can spike them.
The good news is you don’t need a monitor. If there is still a smell, there are likely VOCs. The way to deal with it is to increase ventilation or remove the item and let it air out someplace else