Update! HEALTHY BUILDING NETWORK IS NOW HABITABLE.
Update! HEALTHY BUILDING NETWORK IS NOW HABITABLE.
Update! HEALTHY BUILDING NETWORK IS NOW HABITABLE.
Update! HEALTHY BUILDING NETWORK IS NOW HABITABLE.
Update! HEALTHY BUILDING NETWORK IS NOW HABITABLE.
Update! HEALTHY BUILDING NETWORK IS NOW HABITABLE.

This Women’s History Month, we’re celebrating an incredible leader in the green chemistry and healthy materials space: our very own Teresa McGrath! Teresa is Habitable’s Chief Research Officer, leading our research strategies.

Prior to working at Habitable, Teresa led the Chemical Management Program for Sherwin-Williams, the largest paints and coatings company in the world, where she focused on hazards reduction and transparency and assisted business units in meeting sustainability and green chemistry goals. She also spent nine years as the Senior Managing Toxicologist at NSF International’s Green Chemistry Programs, and two years at the Environmental Protection Agency in the Design for the Environment (DfE) Branch of the Office of Pollution Prevention and Toxics (OPPT).

We caught up with Teresa to learn why she’s a champion for safer chemicals and healthier products and to get her perspective on the industry today.

HABITABLE:
What got you interested in working in sustainable products and clean chemistry?

TERESA MCGRATH:
It all starts with my family. Specifically my father – who would never identify as an environmentalist – but through his actions taught me to care for those who are most vulnerable and to take care of our planet. For example, more than once I witnessed my dad giving CPR to an injured animal that one of our dogs had mangled. In grade school I disgusted my friends by pulling carrots out of a peanut butter and jelly coated baggie my father had reused (this was before reusable bags were a thing!).  

In college I did a research project on how to remove pesticides from drinking water using a biocatalytic filter method. It took me until the end of the project to ask myself “Wait, why is this pollution in our drinking water to begin with? Why are we using chemistry in such an inefficient, clumsy way?” After a little digging I stumbled on the Twelve Principles of Green Chemistry, authored by Dr. Paul Anastas and Dr. John Warner. These principles are centered around using chemistry to prevent pollution rather than create it, to make efficient use of resources down to every atom, to avoid waste. This was an inspiring moment for me.

I decided to pursue a graduate degree in chemistry that focused on Green Chemistry. At the time the only graduate program focused entirely on “Clean Chemical Technology” was in the U.K. at University of York. Off to England I went, and I have worked in the field of Green Chemistry for my entire career. 

H:
What has surprised you the most about working in this field?

TM:
I have worked in government, NGOs, and industry. I think what is surprising is how much these stakeholders have in common and how most people want the same things when it comes to human health and the environment. Most people want (to make, use, or buy) safer products that work well and they can afford. It is this alignment that we can all use to make progress.

The most exciting projects in my work experience were those that harnessed input from different stakeholders with different perspectives. For example, in 2017 Valspar invited NGOs and academics who fought against the use of the endocrine-disrupting chemical bisphenol A (BPA) to help them design and test alternatives to BPA for use in food packaging. 

We can all learn from each other, and these moments of collaboration are critical to enable market changes toward products that are safer for human health and the environment. 

H:
Who has inspired you along your journey?

TM:
In addition to Dr. Anastas and Dr. Warner, I am grateful to Dr. Lauren Heine, who I met at a Gordon Green Chemistry conference when I was in graduate school and has been a friend and mentor to me ever since. Dr. Heine is a leader in the field of green chemistry, green engineering, and sustainable business practices.

I first met Lauren when she was the Director of Applied Science at Green Blue Institute, where she developed the CleanGredients database in partnership with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to help cleaning product manufacturers find safer alternatives. At Clean Production Action, she co-authored and led the development of the GreenScreen for Safer Chemicals, a method for comparative chemical hazard assessment. She has also worked as Director of Science and Data Integrity at ChemFORWARD, where she co-created a harmonized chemical hazard assessment methodology that will not helps people avoid chemicals of concern, but also identify safer alternatives. She serves on various advisory boards and committees all over the world to share with the rest of the world a bit of the brilliance whenever she can. 

Lauren taught me that collaboration is one of the most important tools to inspire change. She has an unique ability to build connections and relationships with every project she is involved with. I aspire to approach my work with this same focus.

I also credit Lauren with helping me land my very first job out of graduate school at the EPA despite the fact that I handed her a printed resume on scented paper (long story!). 

H:
What are you excited about?

TM:
When I talk to project teams about how they find and select healthier products for new construction or retrofits, I often hear that they rely on disclosures like Health Product Declarations (HPDs) or Declare labels, or ecolabels such as Greenseal or Cradle to Cradle certifications, or most often they rely on manufacturer claims about the product. 

I’m feeling optimistic that there has been more traction with manufacturers using these great transparency programs. There are a limited number of products on the market today that carry disclosures, and even fewer that have ecolabels. Real estate teams often feel stuck when the product they want to select is not yet disclosed. Also, because a product carries a disclosure or an ecolabel does not mean it is the best choice to avoid hazards for that product category. 

I believe that there is a lot of value in disclosures and product certifications and that they play a critical role in our ecosystem. And, I believe the most powerful way to achieve safer products is to start BEFORE relying on those product disclosure tools. Project teams can take advantage of product type guidance to select products that are typically safer than others – all before ever selecting from an individual manufacturer.

Habitable’s InformedTM product guidance is informed by our 20+ years of building materials research. Guidance for individual product categories are generated by analyzing everything we know about a product category, including the way the products are made, the hazards associated with the product content, and end of life options for different product types. The reason I am so excited about this resource is that it summarizes a LOT of technical information into a simple, easy to use format that can be applied easily to both benchmark current practices and select typically safer products for projects, and even help document the powerful impacts of choosing safer materials on a project. 

H:
What advice do you have for up-and-coming leaders in this space?

TM:
Don’t be afraid to reach out directly to professionals to learn more about their jobs. Ask what experience they are looking for in candidates, what their day to day looks like, and even directly ask about open positions or internship opportunities. Once you are in a role, actively look for opportunities to meet people within and outside of your organization. By expanding your network you learn different perspectives and build your capacity to collaborate on your next project. I can say from experience that you can make an impact from many different vantage points. We need young energetic leaders in NGOs, government, industry, and academia who are passionate about making the world a better place!

Healthy Building Network (HBN) is excited to welcome Monica Nakielski as our new Board Chair!

“I was excited to join an organization having the impact that HBN does. Our influence and impact spans across industries and the globe with the science and resources we create,” Monica said. “I was interested in networking with other leaders in this space while contributing to the conversation and bringing a healthcare perspective to the table.”

A longtime champion of healthy buildings and spaces, Monica is the former Vice President of Sustainability at Advocate Aurora Health. She has over 15 years of experience as a sustainability practitioner and consultant to Fortune 500 organizations, governments, institutions, and nonprofits, with a focus on health care, hospitals, and health systems.

Monica has long had a passion for healthy materials. Traveling to her mother’s home country of Ecuador years ago, she was deeply impacted by the visible effects of industrial processes and pollution. It was clear that in those communities – like many in the US and around the world – it was the already marginalized communities who were bearing the brunt of the impact of our choices. 

Monica first connected with HBN in 2011 at a BizNGO gathering, where she began to learn about the deeper connections between health and the built environment and the way business and product decisions can deeply impact both. She quickly became an advocate for healthier materials and joined the HBN board in 2019.

A commitment to create healthier spaces for patients, staff, and communities has shaped Monica’s career for more than a decade. Before joining Advocate Aurora Health, she served as the head of sustainability at Blue Cross Blue Shield of Massachusetts (BCBSMA), where she and her team worked to influence health insurers to be leaders of environmental sustainability. She also led and managed sustainability at MassGeneralBrigham (formerly Partners HealthCare) across 16 facilities and 18 million square feet.

A Both-And Approach

As a leader in sustainable healthcare, Monica has been a vocal advocate for integrated approaches to creating safer and healthier spaces. She pushes back against the false dichotomy many practitioners feel of having to choose between climate or chemicals – i.e., focusing on energy efficiency or low-carbon choices versus eliminating toxic chemicals from products and the supply chain. She believes that both approaches can and must be aligned and integrated to create truly healthy spaces for all.

One of her proudest successes was impacting the amended fire code while working for a healthcare system in Boston in 2013. She had the opportunity to advocate with the Boston City Council to ensure that the new fire code met both public safety and public health needs. They were successful in removing toxic flame retardants from the requirements, which directly impacted the administrative headquarters they were building at the time. For that project, Monica’s team was successful in ensuring that more than 70% of the materials used in the building interiors avoided the worst  chemicals of concern.

Monica is committed to blazing a trail and bringing others along for the journey. “We are able to drive this cultural shift and change, all the way down to selecting healthier, safer products, while we’re assuring the same, if not better health outcomes,” she said. “It comes down to connecting with our colleagues and educating them – finding the stories and the information that will inspire them to act.”

Monica believes that HBN is well-positioned to lead this work and create a healthier, more just world. “It’s up to us to lead, to share, to continue to collaborate, network, and leverage the science, tools, and resources that HBN publishes.”

A Bright Future for HBN

Monica is incredibly excited for the growth and expansion that HBN is poised to take on in the coming years, and we are fortunate to have her as a leading voice guiding the way.

“What I find most exciting is that these discussions are bubbling up everywhere. With new ESG reporting standards and rules, people are being held accountable. I love the idea of continuing to raise awareness and drive perception, tying it back to the science. For people who have worked in the space of sustainability, we have waited for a really long time for people to connect the dots and to get as excited about this work as we are.”

We are grateful for Monica’s leadership and commitment to helping us achieve our vision that all people and the planet thrive in a world free of toxic chemicals.

“I want to leave the world a better world for my kids, and their kids, and the generations that follow,” she said. “I think we all do.”

Chemicals of concern lurk in a great amount products, from food packaging and computer monitors to lipstick and sunscreen, and you may not know that Habitable supports these industry sectors in their quest for safer chemicals.

Some companies have jumped ahead of regulations to voluntarily reduce or phase out specific chemicals of concern. One approach companies use for guidance is a Restricted Substances List or RSL. An RSL is a list of chemicals or chemical classes (a group of similar chemicals) that are restricted for use in a product.

RSLs can be an organization’s list of chemicals of concern for any industry, such as Green Science Policy Institute’s Six Classes of Problematic Chemicals, or they can be a voluntary industry standard, such as the furniture industry’s BIFMA e3/level list of chemicals restricted for use in certified products. At Habitable, we have created a one stop shop with our own chemical hazard database. Pharos – named for the ancient lighthouse of Alexandria – hosts all of these RSLs and more from a variety of industries to help suppliers screen their materials for chemicals of concern and design products that comply with their customers’ needs, and with health in mind. 

Instead of checking each list individually, you can use Pharos to check a chemical against all RSLs by simply searching a chemical name or identifier (such as a CASRN). You can also search and download each list individually.

About Pharos

Pharos is a comprehensive independent database of chemicals, polymers, metals, and materials.

It was originally developed by the Habitable research team to save time by consolidating data from hundreds of different sources into one place. This system is available via subscription and is used by manufacturers, retailers, designers, NGOs, government groups, and academics across many industry sectors.  

Pharos hosts hazard data for over 200,000 unique chemicals from more than 100 hazard lists. Pharos then maps these data to 25 different resulting types of human health and environmental hazards – such as reproductive toxicity or global warming potential – and assigns a hazard level (e.g high, moderate or low concern) for each endpoint. This translation and distillation of enormous amounts of complex data, to a searchable and practical set of bottom lines makes Pharos a powerful tool. Further, these data are constantly updated to ensure users get the most current information. Pharos helps companies save time finding hazard information, reducing risks by avoiding chemicals of highest concern, and leading the market with safer products. One specific way companies utilize Pharos in their chemicals management process is with RSLs. 

Food Packaging Industry Example

While 12,000 different chemicals are approved for use in the manufacture of food contact materials and articles, most of those chemicals have little to no chemical hazard data associated with them, and some are known to be toxic to humans and/or the environment. 1

Recently a global coalition of leading food service companies, environmental NGOs, and technical experts jointly developed a harmonized Food Contact Chemicals of Concern List (FCCoCL). Hosted on Pharos, FCCoCL provides users with a clear pathway to avoid the most concerning chemicals. 

The voluntary actions taken by companies to disclose and verify the absence of chemicals of concern will help them stay ahead of legislative and regulatory requirements and establish themselves as industry leaders.

Use RSLs to facilitate internal chemicals management.
Whether or not your company’s chemicals management policy is public, an RSL can reduce or eliminate restricted substances in your facilities and in your suppliers’ incoming materials. For example, the Zero Discharge of Hazardous Chemicals Manufacturing Restricted Substances list (ZDHC MRSL), available in Pharos, catalogs substances that are banned from intentional use in the apparel and footwear industries and their supply chains. By communicating these restrictions to the entire supply chain, manufacturers minimize the impact of banned hazardous chemicals on production workers, local communities, and the environment, while helping meet their corporate sustainability goals. 

Use RSLs to maximize your customers’ peace of mind.
Retailers, brands, and manufacturers have published Restricted Substances Lists (RSLs) to help their suppliers identify the top priority chemicals to remove or minimize in their products and processes. For example, Target has relied on an RSL to implement their Chemicals Policy since 2017. Their latest list, the Target Priority Chemical List, is intended to incentivize and support the design of beauty, baby care, personal care, and household cleaning products that are better for people and the planet.

Don’t Stop There!

RSLs are a great way to get started working towards eliminating chemicals of known concern, but they do have limitations. RSLs tell you what not to use, but they cannot tell you what chemicals to use. The best next step beyond RSLs is to prefer fully disclosed, fully assessed, safer alternatives. 

To identify safer alternatives, we recommend starting with full chemical hazard assessments, such as a GreenScreen for Safer Chemicals or those found in the ChemFORWARD shared repository of chemical hazard assessments. Hazard assessments enable informed decisions towards safer alternatives. 

You can use Pharos’ comprehensive data to reduce the use of hazardous chemicals and improve the inherent safety of materials and products. 

By taking advantage of RSLs and other hazard screening tools hosted within Pharos, you can save time and money, advance human and environmental health, and future-proof your products and supply chain. Visit Pharos to learn more or subscribe today!

PS: If you want your RSL added, let us know!
If you’d like to have your RSL added to Pharos to facilitate your chemicals management—or you’d just like to learn more about Pharos—contact us at support@habitablefuture.org today!

Simona Fischer, MSR Design

As registered architect, sustainable design professional, and associate with MSR Design, Simona Fischer has spent much of her career thus far developing and testing strategies for integrating sustainable design into the workflow of architectural practice. Her experience includes project management, Living Building Challenge documentation, and firmwide sustainable design implementation.

Simona is a dynamic community of practitioners who help co-create solutions to accelerate the adoption of healthier building materials in affordable housing. She has presented at national conferences, lectures regularly at the University of Minnesota, and currently co-chairs the AIA Minnesota Committee on the Environment (COTE).

Simona was instrumental in the Living Building Challenge Petal Certification of MSR Design’s new downtown Minneapolis headquarters, which achieved the materials, beauty, and equity petals. The project incorporated more than 114 Red List Free materials and achieved a 28 percent reduction of its embodied carbon footprint by using salvaged materials. She also led the development of guidelines around transparency, sustainability, and health for the firm’s materials library, including training materials for staff and external sales reps.

We sat down with Simona to learn why materials have been a focus of her career and to get her perspective on the green building industry today.

What sparked your passion about healthier materials? Was there an “aha” moment or a time that something just clicked?

I was that kid who won a prize for designing the elementary school recycling banner, so I guess I’ve cared about materials for a long time. But my interest in building materials was piqued in architecture school, when we were challenged to create a new ecolabel. Faced with inventing a way to compare one material to another in terms of sustainability, I realized how mind-blowingly complex of a task that was. How do you make the criteria objective? How do you compare products across categories? How do you measure health – is it just by the list of ingredients, or do you include research on health outcomes factoring exposure and risk (and if so, what research even exists)? How do you stack human health and other metrics against each other and choose which factor outweighs the other? How do you account for performance and durability? The questions were endless and led to more questions, which I found complex and intriguing. In other topic areas like water and energy in buildings, the goal seemed straightforward (at least on the surface). Use less energy, and make it cleaner. Use less water, and make it cleaner. But with materials, the number of variables were infinite. We had to think about balancing not just toxicity to people and embodied carbon, but also harvesting of raw materials, ethical manufacturing, and what to do with all that stuff at the end of its useful life.

I ended up writing my MS thesis on methods for assessing sustainability at the level of the manufacturer, as opposed to focusing solely on individual products which change so frequently. I was really just trying to find a system map at a higher level, and make the big, shifting world of materials more manageable in my head. I still use some of what I learned during that project as  indicators of whether a building product manufacturer is serious about human health and sustainability, or just greenwashing. But sometimes they are greenwashing because they don’t know any better, and they are on their way to improving. So you can’t just write off smaller companies who don’t yet have all the documentation. It’s a learning process for them as well.

At MSR Design, the conversation about healthy materials had already started when I joined to work on The Rose, a Living Building-inspired affordable housing development in Minneapolis. My colleagues Rhys MacPherson, Paul Mellblom, and Rachelle Schoessler-Lynn were leading the conversation about why we should, and how we could, avoid vinyl and other chemicals on The Rose and on other projects across the firm. Over the next couple years we held a number of all-staff discussions and training sessions on healthy materials. Many staff members, from seasoned designers to interns, became interested in the question of how we could do better while still delivering a beautiful aesthetic and the best functionality for our clients. By the time we were ready to start designing our new studio, healthy materials as a concept had had enough time to become embedded in the culture

Tell us about your project to build the new MSR studio. Why was it important to prioritize healthy materials for this project? What went into your process?

When we knew we were moving, we held an all-staff discussion to debate frameworks for certification. We considered LEED, WELL, Fitwell, and Living Building Challenge Petal Certification. In the end, LBC won, because the Materials Petal was so ambitious, prioritizing not only human health through the use of Red List Free products, but also environmental health and other butterfly-effect impacts of resource harvesting and global warming potential and waste. At the same time, the LBC path included an emphasis on equity, as well as using the project as a tool to educate and inspire others. We found the holistic approach inspiring, and appreciated the challenge (most days).

It was important to prioritize healthy materials because we knew our staff cared about living out our values around healthy indoor environments. I think the team will agree that meeting the Red List requirement was difficult. It took time to develop a workflow for gathering the documentation. But it also gave us the opportunity to rethink the way we approach materials from the start of projects. Instead of trying to weed out all the “bad” chemistry, we found it was actually easier to start from scratch and build up a list of materials we knew were likely to comply with the requirement. It ended up being simpler, mostly natural materials, which we used as the palette for our space.

How do you consider low embodied carbon versus health in product selection?

Non-toxic materials and low embodied carbon are two lenses on a singular problem, which is planetary health. Human health is a subcategory of planetary health, since we’re part of the planet and made of its stuff. When indoor and outdoor environments, and plant and animal and human bodies, are polluted by toxic substances, both from human-made toxins and an overabundance of greenhouse gasses, the global ecosystem suffers and humans suffer within it. We are nature. What’s interesting is, younger, upcoming professionals and design students seem to understand this intuitively. They don’t even need to be told that human and global environmental health go hand in hand. So I think as an industry, we just need to accept the interplay of embodied carbon and human health as a foregone conclusion and get straight to the nitty-gritty of what materials we use and how those materials are grown, produced, manufactured and delivered.

That said, we also need to get serious about the data used to back up carbon and health claims. We need transparent, standardized reporting from manufacturers, including making sure the scope of every life cycle assessment (LCA) takes all the impact categories of the AIA Materials Pledge into account. I think petroleum-based building materials are going to be a battleground for a while to come. The low purchase price and saturation in the market make plastics seem like an easy choice for all kinds of different finishes and performance layers in buildings. It is possible to make them somewhat healthier for end-users by being careful to avoid certain additives. But that leaves a massive loophole; the impacts of production and waste on planetary health. I think there’s an opportunity for data to drive a new understanding here. If we can start seeing standardized collection and data crunching of environmental product declaration (EPD) data from different product sectors, we might be able to correlate carbon from building products more directly to regional health impacts of the production of those chemistries. This would help close loopholes that allow the incredible health impact of high global warming potential (GWP) emissions to stay hidden in the shadows

How have you used your knowledge to help move your clients toward healthier materials? What has been most successful?

I think some of my most successful work has been in addressing priorities and processes in our workflow. I can’t count the number of times I’ve heard people say they just wish there was a single, simple database of all the great products. There are ever-improving databases out there, but people always want something else that is missing, so the problem hasn’t been solved. I think the missing piece is a deeper understanding of the principles of product categories, such as knowing what different types–not brands, but general types–of insulation or countertop materials are made of, and where they come from. This level of knowledge, over time, becomes a kind of intuition one uses to filter the world of products even as new things constantly appear in your inbox or your lunch and learns. When you understand the principles, and don’t just rely on a database to provide a solution, it also gets easier to speak knowledgeably and make solid recommendations to clients.

On project work, I have the best luck when I’m upfront about why we need to consider material health alongside cost. You have to tailor your message to the audience, for example, some clients are most receptive to the idea of improving their impact on the world, whereas for others, the message that hits home is one of directly affecting their health or the health of people they care about

How has Habitable’s InformedTM building product research been helpful or influential?

I love InformedTMand recommend it to designers all the time, and clients too. The information is organized in terms of product categories as opposed to brand names or labels, so it aligns with the level of learning that I think is most beneficial to becoming smarter in practice. We used the sample specs to rewrite our paint specifications in 2021. We’ve also heard great lectures from Habitable research team members over the years that have left an impact on our staff. 

What advice do you have for other AEC leaders? Are there processes or approaches you would recommend? Where would you recommend a newcomer to healthier materials start?

For designers, I recommend signing the AIA Materials Pledge and studying the categories. The Pledge is a great framework – if you address each of the Pledge categories in some way, you know you’re hitting the right bases. If you can, allot some time to staff education and discussion. I recommend the Living Building Challenge Materials Petal as a particularly inspiring framework for education and good discussion, because it is based on absolute goals, instead of relative improvement. The COTE Super Spreadsheet (downloadable on the AIA website) is a good starting point for addressing materials issues in an applied manner on projects. 

At MSR Design, our internal education efforts led to the development of our Material Library Entry Criteria. If others want to design similar criteria for their libraries, they are welcome to copy ours outright or modify as needed: www.msrdesign.com/generative-impacts

The more we as designers align in our message to manufacturers about health and carbon, the easier it becomes for them to stay in business while giving us what we want

What are you most excited about right now?

I’m excited about natural and biobased materials. On the high-tech side, there is so much opportunity for new materials to be developed, especially bio-based polymers. On the other hand, there is a new straw bale project that is being built in Minneapolis. It’s low tech in comparison to the latest research in biomaterials, and yet it combines healthy, natural materials seamlessly with low carbon construction. The team is using Passive House building science principles to build a durable system, which they will test with sensors in the walls over the next few years. I really resonate with the idea that we can build a sustainable future with natural materials in both high- and low-tech ways

What do you want other people to know?

We, as an industry, are practicing architecture and construction in an era where buildings are made of hybrid material systems so complex, we hardly know what’s in them or why they work. I think we architects can perhaps find evidence of the Vitruvian virtues of utilitas (utility) and venustas (beauty) in the work we produce, but somewhere as a profession, I think we have let go of the firmitas (stability). Not in the sense of solid structure, but in the sense of owning materiality and material knowledge as a critical aspect of an architect’s role. We have become accustomed to accepting a level of vagueness about assemblies and their tons of little components, and leaving the details to the product manufacturer. I think understanding materials deeply is about reclaiming this knowledge, and a piece of architecture we have lost

Thank you to Simona and MSR design for being leaders in healthier materials! To learn more about the MSR headquarters project, check out this case study. You can also learn more about MSR’s commitment to sustainable design and download their Sustainable Materials Action Packet on their website. Follow this link to learn more about InformedTM, product guidance which Simona mentions influencing her practice.

If you’re reading this article, you’ve probably begun your journey in understanding the impacts that building materials can have on human health and the environment. But it can feel daunting to know where to start applying this knowledge to your work. You may feel like you don’t have the time or budget to select materials that are free of hazardous chemicals.

Fortunately, there are some relatively simple, low- or no-cost ways to start incorporating healthier materials into your projects right away. By focusing on a few high-impact product categories with readily available healthier products, you can begin the process of preferring and specifying healthier materials without making significant changes to your bottom line.

Healthier materials don’t always cost more.

Assuming that healthier materials always cost more is a common misconception that often stops healthier material initiatives from even being discussed. Here are a few things you can do to start your journey without impacting your budget.

Paints
Paint is one of the easiest categories to start with, as healthier alternatives are readily available with no cost premium. Most paints today have Low or Zero VOC content and emissions and that are free of the endocrine-disrupting chemical APEs (Alkylphenol Ethoxylates), which are also toxic to fish and other aquatic organisms. “Endocrine disrupting” is a fancy way of saying they mimic hormones and send false signals, which cause problems in humans, and are especially problematic to children whose internal systems are nascent and developing. 

Carpets
Avoid the use of carpets with stain repellents or stain treatments. PFAS is the chemical name often cited as a worst-in-class stain and water repellent chemical, and in performance testing, it often falls short of the job it is purported to do and instead, it rubs off and enters our bodies. 

Insulation
Whenever possible, avoid the use of spray foam insulation, which is reacted onsite and can expose installers and building occupants to hazardous ingredients that can cause asthma. Prefer fiberglass, formaldehyde-free mineral wood, or cellulose insulation. 

Use our InformedTM product guidance to quickly and easily find healthier products. 

Antimicrobials
Avoid building products marketed as “antimicrobial” or “containing antibacterials” or similar claims. Some products on the market today include antimicrobials that are added for the purpose of making marketing claims around a product’s potential health benefits. However, there is no evidence that these added chemicals improve human health, and ironically, they can cause harm.

Tips to keep costs low.

When looking at costs, there are a few strategies you can engage to tip the scales in your favor.

Start early in the design process
Consider the use of safer materials early in the design. Late design changes can increase the cost of your project and impose technical constraints that limit opportunities for incorporating certain types of materials. If cost remains a barrier, make sure to include safer materials as an alternate option in your specifications in case that funds become available later in the project.

Leverage purchasing power
By simplifying your material pallet and buying in volume, you may be able to secure better pricing for a healthier product across your organization’s entire portfolio. You can also leverage collective purchasing power by working together with other organizations via affordable housing collectives and associations like the Housing Partnership Network (HPN).

Save by cutting waste
Revisit your design process and emphasize waste minimization. For example, design a floor plan that minimizes cut off waste of your chosen flooring material. The savings you generate can be allocated to the purchasing of healthier materials.

With all this said, the reality is that sometimes safer materials do have a higher upfront cost. However, we hope this article has demonstrated that it’s possible to start prioritizing healthier materials no matter your budget or project size! Together we can all take steps toward a day where all people and the planet thrive in an environment free of hazardous chemicals.

My daughter is nine, and she is going through the first stages of puberty.

This is four years before I reached that stage and two years before any of my three sisters or sister-in-law hit this developmental milestone. While nine is still considered in the normal developmental range for girls in the United States, it is certainly early compared to the women in my generation.

As HBN’s Chief Research Officer, it is my job to understand the impacts that different chemicals can have on human health and work every day to help people make informed decisions about the products they use. As a mother, it is also my job to keep my kids safe. While my research will not help me answer the question about why my daughter may be going through puberty earlier than I did, I can share what I have learned about chemicals found in building materials and their potential impacts on children’s health in the hope that you can join me in making the best decisions we can for our future generations. 

While this article will focus on one environmental factor (exposure to pollutants related to the use of building products), I recognize this is one of many factors that impact children’s health. These include biological factors (e.g. sex, genetics, age), social factors (e.g. income, culture), and environmental factors (e.g. diet, exposure to pollutants).1 With this in mind, this article does not tie specific products or chemicals to specific health outcomes in children. Instead, this article discusses two groups (or classes) of chemicals used in building products that are known to have reproductive toxicity or endocrine disrupting concerns and are found both in household dust and children’s bodies.

Children are not little adults. For example, my five year old likes to sleep in a small cardboard box at night these days with his neck at an angle that would take me weeks to uncrick. They also eat more, inhale more, and drink more than adults per kilogram body weight.2 They also spend more time on the floor (see box story above) and are therefore more likely to ingest or inhale household dust. Their immune and metabolic systems are not fully developed, so their bodies process and eliminate chemicals differently than adults. Lastly, children’s bodies are in a constant state of growth and development, and as such they can be more sensitive to chemicals than adults.3

Let’s explore two groups of chemicals found in building products and in children’s bodies that can impact the endocrine systems.

Bisphenols

Bisphenols are a group of chemicals including bisphenol A (BPA) and bisphenol S (BPS). BPA is on the EU Substances of Very High Concern (SVHC) list due to endocrine disrupting properties. Specifically, many bisphenols mimic the hormone estrogen. BPA is considered “Toxic to Reproduction” by the European Chemicals Agency. Bisphenols are found in many different types of products including plastic items, paper receipts, and metal food and beverage can liners. In building products, BPA-related compounds are found in “epoxy” resin products, for example, epoxy flooring adhesive and epoxy fluid-applied flooring.

In last year’s article, “There’s What In My Body?” I shared how I found BPA and BPS in my body through a biomonitoring study by Silent Spring. Compared to other participants in the study, I had lower levels of BPA but higher levels of BPS, a common replacement for BPA. I was surprised and disturbed by the results, and I cannot help but wonder what my daughter’s levels would be today if we tested for bisphenols or any of the other endocrine disrupting compounds found in household products. Levels of BPA in children are typically higher than for adults. Most importantly, even tiny amounts of endocrine disrupting chemicals, including BPA, can lead to health and behavioral problems in developing children.4 For example, increasing urinary BPA levels in children are linked to an increase in behavioral regulation problems, anxiety, and hyperactivity.

The good news is that bisphenols are rapidly metabolized. If you can identify and remove sources of bisphenols from your home and diet, you can reduce your exposure.

Orthophthalates

Orthophthalates are a group of chemicals used as plasticizers – additives that make plastics more flexible. Orthophthalates can be developmental toxicants per the U.S. National Toxicology Program.5 Some common orthophthalates interfere with the production of testosterone, which can have irreversible effects on the male reproductive system. Higher exposure to certain orthophthalates has been associated with higher incidences of preterm birth; in particular, mothers who had consistently higher exposures to orthophthalates were five times more likely to experience spontaneous preterm birth (Ferguson et al 2014, JAMA Pediatrics). Preterm birth is associated with a variety of adverse health outcomes including increase in disability as young adults.6

Orthophthalates are sometimes called “everywhere chemicals” because they are so common in household products. With respect to building products, up until recently orthophthalates were prevalent in vinyl flooring. While the vinyl flooring industry has largely phased them out of new products, many homes with vinyl flooring installed before 2015 will still likely contain orthophthalate plasticizers. Orthophthalates can also be found in sealants used throughout the home. While the sealant industry is beginning to phase out these chemicals, they are still commonly used. 

Similar to bisphenols, phthalates are metabolized quickly, so identifying potential sources and removing those from the home is the easiest way to reduce exposure. Possible sources include older plastic toys, cleaning products, personal care products, sealants, older vinyl flooring (pre-2018), and fragrances. 

My daughter is not an outlier. Over the last 40 years, the average age of initial onset of puberty has decreased by 12 months. There are likely multiple reasons for this trend. However, an increase in exposure to a cocktail of endocrine disruptors is a possible explanation. Collectively, we can use our voices and buying power to shift the market towards safer products.

What can you do to help?

  1. You can step up out of red and choose products that are ranked ideally yellow or green through Informed™
     
  2. Ask your retailer to keep products containing hazardous chemicals off of the shelves. The Mind the Store campaign by Safer Chemicals, Healthy Families encourages retailers to move away from phthalates, bisphenols, and other hazardous chemicals. Hot off of the presses is the latest Retailer Report Card. See how your favorite retailer stacks up.
     
  3. Support legislation that uses the class-based approach to ban problematic chemicals. The Green Science Policy Institute develops research and supports policies that prevent the use of “Six Classes of Harmful Chemicals”. By reducing the use of entire classes of chemicals, we reduce the chance for regrettable substitution and the inefficiencies and dangers associated with a one-at-a-time or “toxic whack-a-mole” approach to chemical restrictions. In addition to bisphenols and phthalates, GSPI’s Six Classes include per- and polyfluorinated alkyl substances (PFAS), antimicrobials, flame retardants, some solvents, and certain metals. Numerous state legislatures have passed laws restricting the use of bisphenols and phthalates in a variety of products.

SOURCES

  1. Commission and for Environmental Cooperation. “Toxic Chemicals and Children’s Health in North America: A Call for Efforts to Determine the Sources, Levels of Exposure, and Risks That Industrial Chemicals Pose to Children’s Health,” 2006. http://www3.cec.org/islandora/en/item/2280-toxic-chemicals-and-childrens-health-in-north-america-en.pdf
  2. Miller, Mark D., Melanie A. Marty, Amy Arcus, Joseph Brown, David Morry, and Martha Sandy. “Differences between Children and Adults: Implications for Risk Assessment at California EPA.” International Journal of Toxicology 21, no. 5 (October 2002): 403–18. https://doi.org/10.1080/10915810290096630.
  3. Commission and for Environmental Cooperation. “Toxic Chemicals and Children’s Health in North America: A Call for Efforts to Determine the Sources, Levels of Exposure, and Risks That Industrial Chemicals Pose to Children’s Health,” 2006. http://www3.cec.org/islandora/en/item/2280-toxic-chemicals-and-childrens-health-in-north-america-en.pdf.
  4. Braun, Joe M., and Russ Hauser. “Bisphenol A and Children’s Health.” Current Opinion in Pediatrics 23, no. 2 (April 2011): 233–39. https://doi.org/10.1097/MOP.0b013e3283445675.
    Braun, Joe M., Amy E. Kalkbrenner, Antonia M. Calafat, Kimberly Yolton, Xiaoyun Ye, Kim N. Dietrich, and Bruce P. Lanphear. “Impact of Early-Life Bisphenol A Exposure on Behavior and Executive Function in Children.” Pediatrics 128, no. 5 (November 2011): 873–82. https://doi.org/10.1542/peds.2011-1335.
  5. “NTP-CERHR Monograph on the Potential Human Reproductive and Developmental Effects of Di-Isodecyl Phthalate (DIDP).” National Toxicology Program, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Center for the Evaluation of Risks to Human Reproduction, NIH Publication No. 03-4485. April 2003.
  6. Lindström, Karolina, Birger Winbladh, Bengt Haglund, and Anders Hjern. “Preterm Infants as Young Adults: A Swedish National Cohort Study.” Pediatrics 120, no. 1 (July 2007): 70–77. https://doi.org/10.1542/peds.2006-3260.

Dr. Ami Zota, Associate Professor at the Department of Environmental & Occupational Health at the George Washington University (GWU) Milken Institute School of Public Health, created a platform to amplify underrepresented voices in science and environmental health. She launched her vision, Agents of Change, in 2019 with its first cohort of changemakers.

The high-achieving crew included Dr. MyDzung Chu, a first-generation Vietnamese-American, environmental epidemiologist, new mother, and postdoctoral scientist at the GWU Milken Institute School of Public Health. MyDzung is invested in understanding social determinants of health and environmental exposures within the home, workplace, and neighborhood contexts. Her current research investigates the impact of federal housing assistance on residential environmental exposures for low-income communities. 

In her Agents of Change blog, Why Housing Security is Key to Environmental Justice, MyDzung examines the intersection of housing, racism, and environmental justice, and its effects on population health. She challenges us: “It is time for the environmental health community to step up and be at the forefront of addressing housing insecurity.”

MyDzung is practicing what she preaches – and blazing a trail while doing it. In her local community, MyDzung organizes with residents and non-profit organizations for affordable housing, equitable development, and anti-displacement policies. Her dissertation research examined socio-contextual drivers of disparities in indoor and ambient air pollution and poor housing quality for low-income, immigrant, and Black and Brown households. In a study published in Environmental Research, MyDzung and colleagues found that renters in multifamily housing were exposed to higher levels of fine particulate matter indoors that homeowner households, due to a combination of building factors and source activities that may be modifiable, such as building density, air exchange, cooking, and smoking. 

MyDzung has a PhD in Population Health Sciences from Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, a MSPH in Environmental-Occupational Health and Epidemiology from Emory University, and a BA in Neuroscience from Smith College.

To keep up to date with MyDzung’s research and impacts, you can follow her on Twitter or LinkedIn. And, click this link to learn more about her colleagues at Agents of Change. Thanks, MyDzung, for your leadership and courage to advance real change.

Pharos makes it  easier than ever to prioritize chemicals management and identify safer alternatives to chemicals of concern. We’re excited to share several resources to help shape the next generation of green chemistry leaders:

  • Two case studies detailing how Klean Kanteen and University of Victoria use Pharos to improve their work
  • A webinar featuring safer chemistry research from the students of Dr. Meg Schwarzman, an environmental health scientist at University of California, Berkeley. Jeremy Faludi, Ph.D., Delft University of Technology also presents his research in 3D printing. Both share success stories using Pharos to support research and chemical alternatives assessment courses.
  • Example assignments and curriculum from Assistant Professor Heather Buckley, Ph.D. of the University of Victoria.

Power Your Work
with Pharos

Educators are doing important work and making our homes, workplaces and communities safer to inhabit. Pharos can help you meet your goals and streamline your work. In addition to our standard online access, now there are more ways to access chemical hazard data! 

  • Connect to the Pharos API to reduce manual entry and ensure you have the most current information available.
  • Not able to take our API yet, but still manually managing lists of lists for your EHS, regulatory, or sustainability programs? We offer low-cost standard and custom data downloads from Pharos to power your internal chemicals management programs.

If you are interested in further details, or subscribing to Pharos, more information is available here.

Thank you to Positive Energy’s Building Science podcast for hosting Habitable’s Gina Ciganik, CEO, and Billy Weber, Collective Impact Director, to discuss our resources and work towards healthier building products.

For years, Habitable has been thinking about and consulting with our partners about how to describe the impact of choosing healthier building products. Here’s why this is a complex and challenging issue for the industry: 

  • Incomplete knowledge of what many building products are made of 
  • Limited understanding of the health hazards of the thousands of chemicals in commerce today 
  • Trade-offs when making material choices 

These reasons drive the need for full transparency of chemical contents and full assessment of chemical hazards. This can ultimately lead to optimizing products in order to avoid hazardous chemicals.

Toxic chemicals have a huge and complex impact on the health and well-being of people and the environment. Those impacts are spread throughout a product’s life cycle. For example, fenceline communities can be exposed during the manufacturing of products in adjacent facilities, workers can be exposed on the job during the manufacturing and installation processes, and building occupants can be exposed during the product’s use stage. Some individuals suffer multiple exposures because they are affected in all of those instances.  

In addition, toxic chemicals can be released when materials are disposed of or recycled. When they incorporate recycled content into new products, manufacturers can include legacy toxicants, inhibiting the circular economy and exposing individuals to hazardous chemicals—even those that have been phased out as intentional content in products. 

We know intrinsically that hazardous chemicals have the potential to do harm and that they commonly do so. For champions of this cause, that understanding of the precautionary principle is enough. Others still need to be convinced and often want to quantify the impact of a healthy materials program. How can healthy building champions start to talk about and quantify the impacts of material choices?

Broad Impacts of Toxic Chemicals
One way researchers quantify the impact of chemicals is to consider the broad economic impacts of chemical exposures. Evidence increasingly shows that toxic chemical exposures may be costing the USA billions of dollars and millions of IQ points. One recent study estimates that certain endocrine-disrupting chemicals cost the United States $340 billion each year. This is a staggerring 2.3% of the US gross domestic product.1 And that is for only a subset of the hazardous chemicals that surround us every day. These numbers provide important context for the larger discussion of toxic chemical use, but cannot easily be tied to daily decisions about specific materials.

Market Scale Impacts
For years, Habitable has been targeting orthophthalates in vinyl flooring as a key chemical and product category combination to be avoided. Orthophthalates can be released from products and deposited in dust which can be inhaled or ingested by residents—particularly young children who crawl on floors and often place their hands in their mouths3. By systematically reducing chemicals of concern in common products, we can all work together to continue to affect this scale of change in the marketplace and keep millions more tons of hazardous chemicals out of buildings.

Impacts on the Project Scale
Context is key for understanding the impact chemical reduction or elimination can have—a pound of one chemical may not have the same level of impact as a pound of another chemical. But, given the right context, this sort of calculation may prove useful as part of a larger story. The following examples provide context for the story of different impacts of different chemicals. 

  • Small decisions, big impacts: While many manufacturers and retailers have phased out hazardous orthophthalate plasticizers, some vinyl flooring may still contain them. If we consider an example affordable housing project, avoiding orthophthalates in flooring can keep dozens of pounds of these hazardous chemicals out of a single unit (about the equivalent of 10 gallons of milk).4 For a whole building, this equates to several tons of orthophthalates that can be avoided.5 It is easy to see how this impact quickly magnifies in the context of a broader market shift.
     
  • Little things matter: Alkylphenol ethoxylates (APEs) in paints are endocrine-disrupting chemicals make up less than one percent of a typical paint. In this case, by making the choice to avoid APEs, a couple of pounds of these hazardous chemicals are kept out of a single unit (about the equivalent of a quart of milk). This translates to a couple of hundred pounds kept out of an entire building.6 This quantity may seem small compared to the tons avoided in the phthalate example above, but little things matter. Small exposures to chemicals can have big impacts, particularly for developing children.7 And, since our environments can contain many hazardous chemicals, and we aren’t exposed to just a single chemical at a time, these exposures stack up in our bodies.8
  • Reducing exposure everywhere: Choosing products without hazardous target chemicals keeps them out of buildings, but can also reduce exposures as these products are manufactured, installed, and disposed of or recycled. Some chemicals may have impacts that occur primarily outside of the residence where they are installed, but these impacts can still be significant. Polyvinyl chloride (PVC), for example, a primary component of vinyl flooring, requires toxic processes for its production and can generate toxic pollution when it is disposed of. Manufacturing of the PVC needed to create the vinyl flooring for one building as described above can release dozens of pounds of hazardous chlorinated emissions, impacting air quality in surrounding communities.9 These fenceline communities are often low-income, and suffer from disproportionate exposure in their homes, through their work, and from local air pollution. If choosing non-vinyl flooring for a single building can help reduce potential exposure to hazardous chlorinated emissions in these fenceline communities, imagine the potential impacts of avoiding vinyl on a larger scale!

 

In addition to information about target chemicals to avoid, our Informed™ product guidance provides recommendations of alternative types of materials that are typically better from a health hazard perspective and includes steps to work toward the goal of full transparency of product content and full assessment of chemical hazards. This framework can help ensure that toxic chemicals and  regrettable substitutions are avoided.

Each decision you make about the materials you use, each step toward using healthier products, can have big impacts within a housing unit, a building, and in the broader environment. Collectively, these individual decisions also influence manufacturers to provide better, more transparent products for us all. Ultimately, this can reduce the hazardous chemicals not just in our buildings but also in our bodies.

SOURCES

  1. Attina, Teresa M, Russ Hauser, Sheela Sathyanaraya, Patricia A Hunt, Jean-Pierre Bourguignon, John Peterson Myers, Joseph DiGangi, R Thomas Zoeller, and Leonardo Trasande. “Exposure to Endocrine-Disrupting Chemicals in the USA: A Population-Based Disease Burden and Cost Analysis.” The Lancet 4, no. 12 (December 1, 2016): 996–1003. https://doi.org/10.1016/S2213-8587(16)30275-3.
  2. “Disease Burden & Costs Due to Endocrine-Disrupting Chemicals.” NYU Langone Health, July 12, 2019. https://med.nyu.edu/departments-institutes/pediatrics/divisions/environmental-pediatrics/research/policy-initiatives/disease-burden-costs-endocrine-disrupting-chemicals.
  3. Bi, Chenyang, Juan P. Maestre, LiG Hongwan, GeR Zhang, Raheleh Givehchi, Alireza Mahdavi, Kerry A. Kinney, Jeffery Siegel, Sharon D. Horner, and Ying Xu. “Phthalates and Organophosphates in Settled Dust and HVAC Filter Dust of U.S. Low-Income Homes: Association with Season, Building Characteristics, and Childhood Asthma.” Environment International 121 (December 2018): 916–30. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.envint.2018.09.013.; Mitro, Susanna D., Robin E. Dodson, Veena Singla, Gary Adamkiewicz, Angelo F. Elmi, Monica K. Tilly, and Ami R. Zota. “Consumer Product Chemicals in Indoor Dust: A Quantitative Meta-Analysis of U.S. Studies.” Environmental Science & Technology 50, no. 19 (October 4, 2016): 10661–72. https://doi.org/10.1021/acs.est.6b02023.
  4. According to the USDA, milk typically weighs about 8.6 pounds per gallon. See: “Weights, Measures, and Conversion Factors for Agricultural Commodities and Their Products.” United States Department of Agriculture, June 1992. https://www.ers.usda.gov/webdocs/publications/41880/33132_ah697_002.pdf?v=0.
  5. HBN used the Common Products for Luxury Vinyl Tile and Vinyl Sheet to estimate the amount of plasticizer. We assumed a 100 unit building of 1000 square foot two-bedroom apartments with vinyl flooring throughout the units.
  6. HBN used the Common Product profiles for Eggshell and Flat Paint to estimate the amount of surfactant and assumed a 100 unit building of 1000 square foot two-bedroom apartments.
  7. Vandenberg, Laura N., Theo Colborn, Tyrone B. Hayes, Jerrold J. Heindel, David R. Jacobs, Duk-Hee Lee, Toshi Shioda, et al. “Hormones and Endocrine-Disrupting Chemicals: Low-Dose Effects and Nonmonotonic Dose Responses.” Endocrine Reviews 33, no. 3 (June 1, 2012): 378–455. https://doi.org/10.1210/er.2011-1050.
  8. Impacts can be additive, where health impacts are equal to the sum of the effect of each chemical alone. They can also be synergistic, where the resulting health impacts are greater than the sum of the individual chemicals’ expected impacts.
  9. HBN used the Common Products for Luxury Vinyl Tile and Vinyl Sheet to estimate the amount of PVC. We assumed a 100 unit building of 1000 square foot two-bedroom apartments with vinyl flooring throughout the units. Emissions are based on the Calvert City, KY Westlake plant examined in HBN’s Chlorine and Building Materials Project. According to EPA’s EJScreen tool, the census blockgroup where this facility is located is primarily low income, with 62% of the population considered low income (putting this census block group in the 88th percentile nationwide in terms of low income population). EJScreen, EPA’s Environmental Justice Screening and Mapping Tool (Version 2018). Accessed March 18, 2019. https://ejscreen.epa.gov/mapper/

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