By David Marcus on
19 Mar 2014 •
openbook 3 minute read
What happens when you gather 76 passionate and informed professionals in a room to discuss challenges and opportunities at the intersection of health, materials, and the built environment?
Progress.
That’s how I felt at the end of the day on Thursday, February 2 …
Last week the California Department of Toxic Substances (DTSC) announced three “priority products” containing chemicals of concern that will inaugurate its Safer Consumer Products Program. The program requires that the manufacturers of these products will need to …
There is a growing movement to refocus building design and operations on human health. LEED v4 is seeking a market transformation by incorporating materials transparency into its materials and resources credits, and by integrating other health-based strategies into othe …
Tens of thousands of chemicals are in commerce today. Thousands of these end up in the products we use every day. A number of analyses have noted how little we know about which chemicals are in our products and what the health and environmental hazards are. In fact, …
One of the most impressive messages of the Materials and Human Health Summit at the Philadelphia Greenbuild Conference in November was how rapidly chemical information transparency in building materials has become commonly accepted. Several hundred designers and build …
As a doctor and an environmental health scientist, I field a lot of questions about how we’re affected by the chemicals that make up the materials in our everyday lives. These questions often have to do with materials used in buildings or the products that go inside t …
Very few people walk into a hardware store and say, “I am looking for a mixture of calcium silicate, magnesium oxide, clay and sand for my driveway, can you tell me how much calcium sulfate to use if I want it to set quickly when I pour it this weekend?”
Most peo …
Last month USGBC convened a small group of industry and academic leaders to discuss how to increase information transparency in the building materials supply chain and leverage that transparency to transform the marketplace to remove hazardous ingredients from products. …
The products used to create and operate our homes and commercial buildings have far-reaching consequences for human health and the environment. Today, we are in the middle of revolution in the consideration of the attributes and impacts of the products used in our built …
As Marty Mulvihill opined in his October 14, 2013 blog, ideally “a perfect building material . . . from raw material sourcing, to building, and through decommissioning – are all safe for human health and the environment.” Chemical risk is a function of both a chem …
