In the biological testing of wood based board materials it has been shown that exposure of boards in a closed vessel system may lead to inaccurate results due to the build up of volatile substances that inhibit the test fungi. It is thought that this is a transitory effect of freshly manufactured boards. In the European standard for testing fungal durability of board materials which is currently under development (DD-ENV 12038:1996), a leaching pre-conditioning method is used to remove this effect. A variety of alternative ageing procedures have been studied, including natural weathering, leaching and evaporative procedures, to determine the most appropriate pre-conditioning protocol for the decay test. Our results show that there are procedures which are more efficient, and possibly more meaningful in terms of effectiveness or appropriateness of regime for use on board specimens.

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