Healthier Homes Begin with Healthier Building Materials

Science-based methods that link the chemical contents of building products with human and environmental health hazards have become well-established over the past decade. Product ingredient disclosures that report this information, as well as information tools to select products with desired health characteristics, are now affordable and easy-to-use by any design project team member, without the need for advanced training. This session will explain the industry standard methodology of the Health Product Declaration (HPD) and how, using web-based tools, project teams can easily make informed decisions that promote the use of healthier building products, backed up by the full transparency of open standards and publicly available information. An end-to-end example of how this information is created by manufacturers and used in product selection by project teams will be demonstrated, using two important products in residential construction: roofing and insulation. It will also demonstrate how this information provides documentation to support many green building certifications, such as Indoor AirPlus, LEED, Living Building Challenge and others with a focus on healthier materials.Learning Objectives: 1. Participants will understand the science-based methods for linking the chemical contents of building products with human and environmental health hazards.2. Participants will learn how manufacturers collect and report health information about their products, and how it is made transparent and publicly available with the demonstrated web-based information tools.3. Participants will learn about the information that is required to evaluate the human and environmental health hazards in building materials, the affordable tools now available to building project teams that make it possible without the need for expert training, and how builders can easily incorporate this step into their product selection process.4. Participants will learn how product content and health information disclosures simplify providing documentation for green building certifications such as Indoor AirPlus, LEED and Living Building Challenge.Presenters: Paul Shahrairi, Green building and the application of technology in the real estate, design, engineering, and construction industries.Andrew Guido, VP of Sustainability & Innovation, Empire CommunitiesAaron Smith, CEO, EEBACory White, Technical Director, Health Product Declaration CollaborativeColin Harrington, Program Manager of Sustainability Marketing & Communications, Saint-Gobain North America

There are no comments yet.

Please log in to write the first comment.