Health Products Declaration (Pilot Version)
This past week, as part of FXFOWLE's Green October focus on materials, Bill Walsh, Executive Director of the Healthy Building Network, came to the office to present two streamlined and standardized format reporting tools, The Health Product Declaration and Pharos Project. These two systems provide a clear, standardized way to measure and evaluate "the health" of available building products.
With growing concerns over toxins in construction materials, the building product industry finds itself caught up in a storm of claims about the environmental costs and benefits of particular product ingredients. The sheer volume of noise generated leads architects to question the merit of any given product.
The Pharos Project's Building Product Library allows users to filter search results for products that don't contain phthalates and HFRs. (source: http://www.healthybuilding.net)
In contemporary society, accountability and grading systems seem to be all the rage, whether for your child's public school or the take-out restaurant around the corner. These grading systems enable consumers to evaluate standardized and simplified assessments about the quality of the services they use. Ostensibly, once a product has been branded a "C", the forces of the market will intervene to improve it. While the threat of economic obsolescence is the punitive force of these grades, the ultimate goal is simply to improve quality. Too often, however, efforts shift toward teaching to the test, cleaning the kitchen on inspection day, or LEED point-mongering.
Bill introduced these new third-party disclosure tools as a method of research – leading architects to care much more about the health of the buildings we create. At best, they will inspire us to be more self-reflective about our own work.
I'm eager to try these tools out, to see what is actually in the products we are researching for our projects. Perhaps we could start by filtering a particular chemical out of one of our projects. Understanding these products from a third-party source and not, in the words of the Pharos Project, "through the prolific greenwashing" of the manufacturers, could be the key to dealing with some of most persistent toxins in the construction industry (see TerraChoice's "7 Sins of Greenwashing").
It's never too soon to deal with toxicity and health risks in building products, and it's up to us as designers to use these tools thoughtfully - how else will we make the grade in the next set of lettered evaluations?
With growing concerns over toxins in construction materials, the building product industry finds itself caught up in a storm of claims about the environmental costs and benefits of particular product ingredients. The sheer volume of noise generated leads architects to question the merit of any given product.
The Pharos Project's Building Product Library allows users to filter search results for products that don't contain phthalates and HFRs. (source: http://www.healthybuilding.net)In contemporary society, accountability and grading systems seem to be all the rage, whether for your child's public school or the take-out restaurant around the corner. These grading systems enable consumers to evaluate standardized and simplified assessments about the quality of the services they use. Ostensibly, once a product has been branded a "C", the forces of the market will intervene to improve it. While the threat of economic obsolescence is the punitive force of these grades, the ultimate goal is simply to improve quality. Too often, however, efforts shift toward teaching to the test, cleaning the kitchen on inspection day, or LEED point-mongering.
Bill introduced these new third-party disclosure tools as a method of research – leading architects to care much more about the health of the buildings we create. At best, they will inspire us to be more self-reflective about our own work.
I'm eager to try these tools out, to see what is actually in the products we are researching for our projects. Perhaps we could start by filtering a particular chemical out of one of our projects. Understanding these products from a third-party source and not, in the words of the Pharos Project, "through the prolific greenwashing" of the manufacturers, could be the key to dealing with some of most persistent toxins in the construction industry (see TerraChoice's "7 Sins of Greenwashing").
It's never too soon to deal with toxicity and health risks in building products, and it's up to us as designers to use these tools thoughtfully - how else will we make the grade in the next set of lettered evaluations?