Electrostatic behaviour of wood and laminate floor coverings and current situation in standardisation

The tendency for laminate floor coverings to electrically charge can have consequences for the user. A charge can build when an insulating material, such as insulating flooring, comes into contact to another material, such as footwear. For human beings the threshold of sensation is roughly 2 kV of body voltage when touching grounded objects. As a consequence, manufacturers of laminate floor coverings strive to find technical solutions for antistatic laminate floor coverings to be able to declare products as “antistatic”, defined in EN 14041. This standard is based on measurements of a bodies' voltage, according to the new EN 1815.