Hanssem Co., Ltd. (CEO Kang Seung-soo), a comprehensive home interior specialist, announced that it is strengthening its product verification and tightening the hazard and safety standards for all of its products in order to protect consumers from harmful substances.
Hanssem introduced hazardous-substance verification for its products back in 2016, and last year, when it relocated and expanded the Hanssem Living Environment Technology Research Institute to Ansan, Gyeonggi Province, a thorough internal hazardous-substance verification system took root within the company.
Accordingly, Hanssem operates an Environmental Safety Assurance System that prevents any product failing to pass the company's own standards from being released, thereby strengthening product quality control. Its verification system applies rigorous in-house standards that take into account legal criteria, eco-friendly certification criteria, and consumers' living environment from the product-planning stage, verifying not only raw materials but also auxiliary materials.
First, for hazardous substances such as formaldehyde—the substance most representative of sick-house syndrome—volatile organic compounds that can cause skin irritation or respiratory disease, radon, a carcinogen, and heavy metals, Hanssem applies its own in-house standard (E0), which is higher than both the legal standard (E1) and the recommended standards, as its product-release criteria.
It then assigns and manages a unique serial number (S/N) for each product so that products exceeding the standards are not distributed. Even after release, Hanssem has strengthened its follow-up management by, for example, conducting regular verification of its products.
In particular, Hanssem puts all of its products—including furniture, building materials, household goods, and appliances—through a three-stage verification procedure to secure the highest level of quality.
The first stage is raw-material verification, which blocks the potential sources of hazardous-substance emission in advance and manages the formaldehyde emission level of wood raw materials to the ‘E0’ grade, a level three times better than the legal standard.
In fact, Hanssem directly verifies basic construction materials used at Rehaus sites, such as plywood, MDF (a material made by compressing pulverized wood), cement, and insulation. As a result, it warehouses and distributes only materials that have passed Hanssem's standards and been registered, and it directly and strictly manages even materials used in places that are not visible. In this process, raw materials that fall short of the standards are blocked from entering the premises altogether.
The second stage is finished-product verification. Even when products are made using the raw materials verified in the first stage, Hanssem fundamentally blocks any third hazardous substances that could arise as auxiliary materials are combined. To this end, it uses products in which even auxiliary materials such as adhesives and surface materials meet eco-friendly certification standards. Hanssem does not stop there, but also thoroughly finishes the cut edges that are not visible. Seventy percent of hazardous substances are emitted from unfinished cut edges, and to prevent this, Hanssem finishes all such edges.
The third stage is a large-chamber test that examines the hazardous substances in the indoor air of the space where a product is installed. A finished product is placed inside the large chamber installed at the Hanssem Living Environment Technology Research Institute in Ansan to check the levels of hazardous substances in the indoor air that could occur in the space where the product is installed.
This three-stage management unique to Hanssem is a product-safety verification system at the highest level in Korea, verifying hazardous substances and safety from the materials through to the space where the product is installed.
A Hanssem official said, “When consumers buy eco-friendly products, they place importance on the core material, but from a manufacturer's standpoint, not only the core material but also the surface material, edge finishing, paints and plating, and adhesives emit hazardous substances, so they are all important elements that must be checked,” adding, “Because Hanssem verifies the hazardous substances emitted from materials, products, and construction through the Hanssem Environmental Safety Assurance System—which relies on the highest-level standards, experts, and testing facilities in Korea—consumers need not worry about hazardous substances.”