The increased effort to improve energy efficiency, has led to improved "airtightness" of buildings, therefore leading to a reduction in ventilation. This results in an increase in concentration of indoor air pollutants, namely formaldehyde and volatile organic compounds (VOCs), which are suspected to contribute to "sick building syndrome" (SBS). There has been considerable research into the reduction of emissions via modification of current construction products. One modification is to use solid additives, "scavengers" in wood-based panels. This paper examines the effects of these scavengers on mould growth and the absorption of the VOCs; toluene, limonene and formaldehyde. The effects of the sorption of VOCs on the colonisation and growth of different mould species on modified MDF panels were also studied. It was shown that modified boards absorbed the 3 VOCs tested and this absorption did effect mould growth with differences observed in species present and in succession of mould colonisation. INTRODUCTION In recent years, indoor air quality and volatile organic compounds (VOCs) have received increasing attention. Coupled with this, there is an increased effort to improve the energy efficiency of buildings, which has resulted in the improved "air tightness" of buildings. An adverse effect of this, however, is the increase in the concentration of air pollutants, such as VOCs, inside homes where concentrations of many pollutants can be higher than in the outdoor environment (Rong et al., 2002). These VOCs often cause sick building syndrome (SBS) and have a number of symptoms; dizziness, eye and lung irritation, nausea and depression (Zhang and Xu, 2003). Therefore, indoor air quality has become an issue of public health (Kim et al., 2011). The World Health Organisation defines VOCs as compounds with a boiling point between 50 o C to 260 o C (WHO, 1989), which encompasses a great variety of compounds including, hydrocarbons, terpenes and aromatic hydrocarbons. Therefore it is an immense challenge to develop a product that will act as a sink to all VOCs. Historically, there has been considerable research into the reduction of emissions from their original source, such as odourless paints and replacing formaldehyde based resins with biobased resins during wood-based panel production. More recently, there have been investigations into modifying wood-based construction materials and insulation materials to actively absorb formaldehyde and VOCs from the atmosphere.