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Topic: Safe concrete sealer/finish? epoxy, polyurethane  (Read 2216 times)

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Offline hunted22

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Safe concrete sealer/finish? epoxy, polyurethane
« on: August 07, 2015, 11:33:24 AM »
Hello everyone..

I'm not sure if this is the right place to ask this question but here is the deal. I was redecorating my apartment and I wanted to get rid of the carpets and stain and seal my concrete floors for a new modern look. I contacted a company to get some info and they said that they use one of three finishing products. %100 clear epoxy resin, or %100 polyurethane-epoxy resin, and a polyurethane resin based coat that contain solvent (which has "poxy" in its commercial name for some reason!).

I started reading about epoxy hardeners health risk and I got SCARED reading words lice cancer, mutagenic, carcinogen. I have a newborn baby that would star crawling on this floor soon.
I asked around for alternatives available in my region with no epoxy, I found a polyurethane coat but it is sold as wood coat and it also has a hardener so I'm not sure how safe it is, and acrylic coat, but I read that acrylic is weak and undependable if it was applied alone.

Anybody can give my some advice on these stuff?What would you do?

Offline billnotgatez

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Re: Safe concrete sealer/finish? epoxy, polyurethane
« Reply #1 on: August 07, 2015, 01:40:29 PM »
I was thinking of hardwood floors, but even that might need something to make it stick to the concrete.

Offline Intanjir

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Re: Safe concrete sealer/finish? epoxy, polyurethane
« Reply #2 on: August 07, 2015, 08:48:52 PM »
I would avoid using any epoxy that you can't verify as BPA free in any use that a young child might have a large exposure to as the FDA has banned its use in infant bottles.
Most substances can cause harm at high enough concentration. However hormones are active at very small concentrations and so chemicals which mimic them have the potential to be unusually insidious.
I personally would have no concerns about a cured polyurethane floor.

If you can't find a suitable plastic, you can always go for polished concrete sealed with sodium silicate. More labor intensive but quite attractive and low maintenance.

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