On June 24, the State Administration for Market Regulation and the Ministry of Housing and Urban-Rural Development officially issued the “Work Plan for Rectification of Indoor Air Formaldehyde Control and Testing Chaos”, which closely adheres to the requirements of a quality power, a healthy China and the construction of “good houses”, focuses on outstanding issues in the field of formaldehyde control and testing to carry out centralized rectification, accelerates the construction of a full-process, multi-dimensional and normalized industry supervision system, promotes the improvement of the overall quality of the home improvement industry chain, and ultimately achieves the market development goals of “standardized governance, honest testing, safe consumption, and safe living”.
This rectification operation focuses on four major categories of key tasks: First, it is to crack down hard on illegal activities, focusing on investigating and punishing formaldehyde testing institutions and management companies that falsify test data, tamper with test results, and issue false reports. The qualification certificates of institutions that seriously violate the law will be revoked in accordance with the law.
It is included in the market supervision list of serious illegal and dishonest people, and those suspected of criminal offenses will be directly transferred to the judicial organs for processing; at the same time, in response to the chaos of false marketing, price fraud, illegal advertising and other chaos in this field, the relevant departments will also increase the efforts to clean up network information and platform settlement review, and quickly investigate and deal with violations of laws and regulations.
The second step is to carry out targeted industry governance. In response to the widely criticized problem of interest bundling between treatment companies and testing institutions, the plan clearly delineates red lines: formaldehyde management companies are not allowed to force consumers to choose specific testing institutions and are responsible for the authenticity of the test reports they use and display; formaldehyde testing institutions are not allowed to undertake management business, have interests associated with treatment companies, and are not allowed to recommend designated treatment companies and products to consumers. Institutions that violate regulations will be ordered to make corrections, fined, suspended or revoked, and relevant illegal records will be included in credit files.
At the same time, the plan also makes clear and detailed provisions on the air quality testing process for residential and office spaces, the indoor environment testing requirements for completed new houses, the evaluation mechanism for testing institutions, and the protection of consumer rights and interests.
The third is to promote the quality upgrading of the home decoration industry chain. Relevant departments will carry out the quality chain action for the home decoration materials industry, organize technical institutions and leading enterprises to carry out key technology research, increase the quality supervision and spot inspection of building materials, decoration materials, and furniture, regularly expose unqualified products and enterprises and urge rectification within a time limit, and reduce the risk of excessive formaldehyde from the source.
At the same time, it will also accelerate the transformation of technology research and development results, explore the establishment of a nationally shared quality information database for home decoration materials and furniture products, and pilot and promote a replicable industry governance model.
The fourth is to strengthen consumer education guidance. Relevant departments will compile and publish formaldehyde control and testing consumption guidelines to popularize popular science knowledge such as formaldehyde prevention and control and identification of formal testing institutions. At the same time, third-party platforms will be promoted to integrate the resources of compliance testing institutions for consumers to choose, and the establishment of a national unified testing report coding and traceability system will be implemented to achieve “one certificate, one code, full verification” of testing reports, and reduce the cost of consumer rights protection.
It is understood that this rectification operation will be promoted in three stages: June 2026 will be the deployment and investigation stage, and relevant departments in various regions will complete the industry survey and establish a ledger of problem clues; July 2026 will be the centralized rectification stage, with reporting channels open to the public.
A batch of typical illegal cases will be intensively investigated and publicly exposed to form a deterrent for the industry; in August 2026, as the consolidation and improvement stage, the regulatory system will be improved based on the common problems discovered during the rectification, the regulatory shortcomings will be supplemented, a long-term regulatory mechanism will be established, and the long-term healthy development of the home decoration industry will be promoted.
