welcome
The Pharos Project connects you to a network of building professionals and manufacturers committed to transparency as a core value on the path to sustainability. Pharos is not a certification or label, it is information: the critical health and environmental data about the manufacture, use, and end of life of building materials specified and used every day all delivered in an easy to use web based tool.
Courtney Lorenz
Skanska
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The Pharos Project is a project of the Healthy Building Network. HBN is:
In Vermont:
Bill Walsh, Paul Bogart
In California:
Julie Silas, Tom Lent
In Washington, DC:
Larry Kilroy, Sarah Gilberg, Sarah Pickell, Susan Sabella
In Maine:
Jim Vallette
MERCURY CONTAMINATION OF DRYWALL
18 MARCH
Last year, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency ran tests on six drywall products, two from China, and four from the United States. These tests raise an alarm about an element that has been little discussed in the Chinese drywall scare: mercury.
The EPA tests identified mercury in four of these products. The two China-made wallboards contained mercury at 0.19 and 0.562 parts per million (ppm). Two U.S. wallboards also had mercury – one at a minute 0.0668 ppm, and one at a level much higher than any other (2.08 ppm).
The precautionary principle requires us to identify wallboard manufacturing practices that generate mercury. Using U.S. Toxics Release Inventory (TRI) data, we have identified specific drywall products manufactured at plants that release mercury. Additional literature, including last year’s EPA test, convinced us that mercury not only is released in certain factories, but also is present in some wallboard products.
The precautionary principle led us to add mercury as a frequent trace (0.1%) ingredient of wallboard that is manufactured at plants that report mercury releases. For wallboard manufactured in countries that do not require TRI-like emissions reporting (which is most of the world), we list mercury as a trace ingredient of products that use synthetic gypsum generated by coal-fired power plants.
Mercury in synthetic gypsum
The wallboard with the highest concentration of mercury found in last year’s EPA study was made with synthetic gypsum. The vast majority of synthetic gypsum is generated from Flue Gas Desulfurization units of coal-fired power plants. Certainly, the use of FGD has decreased direct releases into the environment from modernized coal-fired power plants. The reuse of this captured material that would otherwise be stacked or landfilled is also a positive. The Pharos renewable/recycled content evaluation rewards products that contain post-industrial waste, including FGD-derived gypsum. But, specifiers should consider this positive evaluation in the context of the common presence of mercury in the synthetic gypsum production life cycle.
A review of 2008 Toxics Release Inventory data from U.S. wallboard manufacturers reveals a direct correlation between substantial mercury releases to the environment and the use of synthetic gypsum.
Gypsum wallboard plants reported a total of 472.8 pounds of mercury releases in 2008. The top five mercury releases all came from wallboard plants that use FGD-derived synthetic gypsum. Lafarge’s Palatka, Fla. and Silver Grove, Ky. plant led all releases with 143 and 124 pounds, respectively. Pharos subscribers may now examine our evaluations of products from these Lafarge facilities, which we released this week.
Other leading drywall manufacturing sources of mercury releases include two US Gypsum plants in Aliquippa, Pa. (58 pounds) and Gypsum, Ohio (25 lbs.), and, CertainTeed’s Proctor, W.V., (32 pounds). These five plants accounted for 82% of reported wallboard plant mercury releases in 2008.
These synthetic gypsum wallboard plants represent a secondary release point for coal-fired power plants’ mercury emissions. The FGD units capture mercury from coal. Wallboard production using synthetic gypsum then redistributes the mercury into the wider environment at the production site, and through the board itself. As a December 2009 US EPA study notes, “both fly ash and FGD residues have been identified as coal combustion residues with the potential to have increased mercury and/or other pollutant concentrations from the implementation of new air pollution technology.”
Mercury in natural (mined) gypsum
It also appears that natural (mined) gypsum also can contain mercury, albeit at lower levels. A U.S. Dept. of Energy-funded study, conducted by U.S. Gypsum (which uses more synthetic gypsum than any other U.S. manufacturer), concludes, “the highest mercury concentration found in the natural gypsum was 0.03 μg/g compared to the lowest mercury concentration of synthetic gypsum of 0.10 μg/g.”
Some – but not most -- plants that do not use FGD-derived gypsum in wallboard production also reported mercury compound releases in 2008 (11 plants, 37.8 pounds total). (Toxics Release Inventory data) For product manufactured at these specific plants, we have added mercury as a trace contaminant in the product’s material contents.
Mercury-free wallboard
One wallboard manufacturer, Serious Materials, has obtained UL-Environment verification of its claim that its EcoRock is “mercury-free.” Serious Materials, unlike the vast majority of wallboard manufacturers, does not use gypsum in EcoRock. So, for this manufacturer at least, the issue of mercury contamination is an important market distinction.
We welcome similar verifications of any wallboard profiled by Pharos, particularly those that have reported mercury releases in the past three years. If a manufacturer provides us with third-party documentation that drywall made in these facilities is mercury-free, we will remove mercury compounds from the product material contents list.
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Pharos researcher Jim Vallette will be speaking at the Maine Indoor Air Quality 2010 Conference at the Augusta Civic Center, March 24. Click here for more info.
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WHAT WOULD YOU LIKE TO SEE? WHAT'S MOST IMPORTANT TO YOUR WORK?
17 MARCH
The Pharos Project team is here in Washington, DC this week for a planning meeting. Besides being incredibly excited about finalizing timelines and plans the near future releases of research, products and functionality, I am especially enjoying the longer term visioning for what’s coming towards the end of 2010 and into 2011. As we look to our future impact areas to create evaluation criteria for, we want to hear from you.
What impact areas from the Pharos framework are you most interested in seeing? Global warming / climate change? Air or water quality? Embodied energy or water? Occupational health and safety? Community relations? Are we missing one? What are the challenges, in your view, products will need to solve in this area to be considered an ideal product?
Let us know what you think in the comments below or send an email to support [at] pharosproject.net and we will post our favorites. We would love to hear your thoughts on how together we can build a more environmentally-sound, healthy, socially-just and transparent building material market.
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CALIFORNIA GIRLS’ BODY BURDEN OF DANGEROUS FLAME RETARDANTS
12 MARCH
A study recently released in Environmental Research shows high levels of brominated flame retardants (PBDEs) in 6-8 year-old girls from California. The study authors speculated that "the higher PBDE levels in girls from California may reflect differences in fire regulation and safety codes." Living and working in California, I have had the chance to partner with health care systems and architects and designers who are constantly coming up against the state’s stringent fire regulations and safety codes. At first blush, it appears California’s higher standards are there to protect our kids and patients and anyone else living or working in a building in the Golden State. Yet, a quick glance at PBDEs in the Pharos Chemical and Material Library shows that these brominated flame retardants are very high chemicals of concern. While it is only the authors' speculation, I will continue to encourage folks I consult with (both professionally and personally), to use the Pharos Project to avoid PBDEs when they purchase building products. After all, my own daughter is an eight-year-old California Girl!
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TRANSPARENCY, KEEPING IT REAL
12 MARCH
The science fiction writer Phillip K. Dick said, “the basic tool for manipulation of reality is the manipulation of words.” This observation seems increasingly relevant as the corporate communications engine begins to rev up its use of the word “transparency” as a core value of all things “green” and “sustainable.”
Before transparency goes the way of “green” and loses its connection to reality and begins to cloud rather than illuminate the green building landscape, it seems necessary to establish a basic definition of the term as we apply it in the Pharos Project.
For our own part, the Pharos Project is not a “black box” certification system or a manufacturer-funded green label. All of the metrics and product data we use to evaluate building materials are completely transparent in our system for the user to view. Sources are provided for all data and the rationale behind our scoring is explained in detail in the system.
For manufacturers, Pharos defines transparency as a product manufacturer answering three basic questions about their product: What’s in it? How was it made? Where did it come from?
That may seem simple enough, but in an era of proprietary polymers, confidential business information and greenwash, it is often too high a bar for many manufacturers to reach. Still, the Pharos Project exists for those product manufacturers who are willing to supply such information and for those designers and specifiers who demand it. Ultimately, real progress towards reversing many of the most challenging environmental issues of our generation will depend upon all of us meeting that standard of transparency rather than redefining the term.
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PHAROS ADDS WALLBOARDS TO BUILDING PRODUCT LIBRARY
09 MARCH
Wallboards, our newest addition to the Pharos Building Product Library, are now ready for users to explore. The first batch of products focuses on products from three leading manufacturers, Georgia-Pacific,National Gypsum, and Temple-Inland. Over the coming weeks, we will add many more companies and products.
Wallboard is any flat board used to cover walls and partitions. These building materials also are called drywall, gypsum board, or plasterboard.
Drywall is most commonly comprised of a gypsum core, with Kraft paper facings and additives. There are several types of modifications. The most common is Type-X, which is fire-resistant board. Other variations include moisture-resistant (MR, or “green”) board, acoustical board, insulating board, and fiberboard, which can include recycled newsprint fibers and perlite filler. Gypsum board is occasionally backed not with paper, but with vinyl or foil.
These are ubiquitous materials. Everyone specifies them. Over 95% of the walls used in the US and Canada are finished with gypsum board. This includes residential, commercial, and institutional buildings.
As this category is unveiled, Pharos users will encounter a surprisingly diverse range of content and scores. We will explain the significances of these variations in the product records and in Signal articles in the coming weeks.
Among the issues:
- Recycled content: There are great variations in recycled content, ranging from none to as high as 99% post-industrial material. Natural (mined) gypsum remains the predominant material used, but synthetic gypsum is capturing an increasing share of the market. Synthetic gypsum is primarily obtained from Flue Gas Desulfurization (FGD) units of recently retrofitted coal-fired power plants. We will explore some of the costs and benefits of using FGD-derived waste in building materials.
- Additives: Wallboard manufacturing uses additives, such as dispersants, accelerators, and set retarders. The most hazardous additive in gypsum board manufacturing is a naphthalene sulfonic acid / formaldehyde copolymer used as a dispersant. Lignosulfonates offer less hazardous, more bio-based, alternatives. These additives raise both manufacturing and indoor air quality concerns.
- IAQ: Some brands of gypsum board have been certified for Indoor Air Quality attributes, including passing California Section 01350 testing, but there are considerable indoor air quality issues. Testing by the state of California and the U.S. EPA has identified formaldehyde emissions from many new wallboard products.
- Made in China: Regulatory scrutiny of the wallboard industry has increased since homeowners began complaining of sickness and other effects from recently installed wallboard that was made in China. We will attempt to characterize what is known about China-made wallboard, and where it is in the U.S. marketplace.
Pharos’ ever-expanding library of building material evaluations now includes five product categories and over 200 products. We will be adding more categories later this month. Thank you for subscribing and supporting our non-profit efforts to shed light on the building material marketplace.
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CATHOLIC HEALTHCARE WEST – A ROLE MODEL FOR CHEMICALS POLICY
04 MARCH
Catholic Healthcare West’s (CHW) recent report, “An Enduring Mission: Social Responsibility Report 2009,” shows what innovative leaders can do to move toward a healthier and just society, even in these difficult economic times.
For more than ten years, CHW has been an environmental leader in the health care sector. As one of the largest nonprofit health care systems on the west coast, CHW has stated its commitment to the earth and its inhabitants and has been in the forefront of efforts to eliminate the use of mercury and PVC in medical devices, reduce energy use and greenhouse gas emissions, provide healthy and locally-sourced food to their patients, and build buildings that are more sustainable.
Their work in 2009 was no exception. Before Congress took up TSCA reform, CHW was developing chemical policies to promote a healthier planet. In 2009, the hospital system passed a Comprehensive Chemicals Policy in order to “create an environment for patients, employees and visitors free from the hazards posed by chemicals that are harmful to humans, animals and the environment.” The goal of the policy was to “develop strategies for promoting, developing and using chemicals that are environmentally preferable across their entire lifecycles.”
I had the privilege of working with CHW on their 2009 Chemicals Policy, specifically to help in the sourcing of environmentally preferable building products. During that year, HBN worked with CHW to review and update their design guidelines for buildings to identify ways in which their facilities could avoid some of the worst chemicals of concern found in building materials. (See pages 46 - 47 of the report to learn about the collaboration). [Moreover, CHW was one of 18 partners from the health care and design community to partner with HBN on our Pharos Pilot Project. Both efforts were aimed at helping implement CHW’s new Chemicals Policy and support sustainable buildings.]
The work of CHW and others in the Pilot Project helped HBN shape Pharos for its public release in November 2009. (Read on page 37 about CHW’s experiences with Pharos and how it intends to use Pharos in the upcoming year )
We need more CHWs in the world -- private enterprises (whether nonprofit or for profit), willing to prioritize chemicals policy reform and to invest in forward-thinking actions that take those first steps toward a healthier planet. I recommend everyone read about the work of CHW, which should motivate small and large businesses to take responsibility for learning more about what’s in the products that they use and to turn in the direction of healthier and more sustainable practices.
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REFLECTIONS ON HIGH PERFORMANCE COATINGS
01 MARCH
With the release of this week’s final batch of Pharos staff-researched High Performance Coatings (HPCs), a total of sixty-five (65) products made by seventeen (17) companies are ready for viewing.
Here are some preliminary findings from the evaluations, pending further review and data entry by the companies themselves. Content disclosure is poor in this category. These products generally contain many seriously toxic chemicals. The HPC industry has a long way to go to create healthy products.
Manufacturer Disclosure of Product Ingredients
As in other Pharos building material categories – Resilient Flooring, Thermal Insulation and MDF-Particle Board-Wheatboard – users can readily identify HPC products that are transparent by sorting the MfrTox (Manufacturing and Community Toxics) column. We have evaluated any product scoring higher than a “1” in MfrTox as fully disclosed.
Only two companies’ public literature provided sufficient material content information to be considered full disclosure: Devoe High Performance Paints (DevFlex 4020-1000 and DevFloor 525) and ITW Resins (AS-150, AS-550, and AS-2500). Due to the overall lack of disclosure by manufacturers in their publically available literature, Pharos was unable to complete MfrTox evaluations for the other 60 products. We recommend that users encourage HPC manufacturers to fully disclose their product ingredients through participation in the Pharos Project.
Material Content
For each product for which there was inadequate disclosure, we associated generic compositions as material content. We developed the generic compositions from content lists of other similar products and from industry and government literature. Specifiers can use these generic ingredient lists to ask suppliers for clarity about chemical content in specific products. When viewed comparatively, the generics reveal some interesting differentiation in hazardous content by type.
In general, epoxies contained the most hazardous ingredients. Two of the most common – and troublesome – ingredients are nonylphenol and Bisphenol A, which the Pharos team profiled in previous Signal articles. Epichlorohydrin, a known carcinogen and suspected endocrine toxicant, is also integral to most epoxies. Another chemical that can be used in epoxies that receives a black flag in the Pharos Chemical and Material Library (CML) is naphthalene, an EPA-listed priority persistent, bio-accumulative toxicant (PBT).
Polyurethane/acrylic blends and alkyd coating were the next most hazardous types of HPCs. Alkyd coatings frequently contain red-flag hazards such as Stoddard solvent (which the European Commission states should be considered carcinogenic to humans), ethylene glycol (NIOSH’s NTP identifies it as a developmental toxicant), and phthalic anhydride, which is frequently prepared from naphthalene.
The production of polyurethane uses a wide variety of toxicants, which add to the hazards associated with acrylics in HPC copolymers. Other hazardous chemicals associated with acrylic coatings include ethylene glycol and known or likely carcinogens such as quartz (IARC Group 1), cristobalite (IARC Group 1), and styrene (OSHA carcinogen list).
Pharos users can learn more about material content hazards in the Pharos CML. By clicking on an ingredient name, you will find a wealth of data about any risks associated directly with the chemical and with chemicals used in the manufacturing of the ingredient.
Volatile Organic Content
All five Rust-oleum products that we examined list no Volatile Organic Content (VOC). Two of these are Green Seal-certified epoxies (S40 and S42), one is an acrylic (S30), and two are polyurethane/acrylic mixtures (S37 and S38).
Polyurethane/acrylic mixtures, as a group, have the lowest VOC content among the evaluated HPCs. VOC content ranges from zero to 100 grams per liter (g/L). Three Eco-Tuff brand polyurethane/acrylic coatings (Industrial Floor Coating, Rubberized Non Skid Safety Coating, and High Traffic Clear Coat) by Eco Safety Products report the absence of any VOC content, even including VOC compounds that are exempt from smog regulation.
The Rust-oleum S30 product is the only acrylic that listed no VOC content, although Miller Paint’s Acro Pure Semi Gloss comes close, at a reported 1.19 g/L. Twenty of the 34 acrylic HPCs evaluated by Pharos report VOC levels of at least 90 g/L. The worst: Miller Paint’s Acrinamel Gloss-White, with 240.85 g/L VOC.
All three one-part epoxies in the Pharos Project contained high levels of VOCs, between 150 and 310 g/L. Two part epoxies had a wide range: from zero reported in the Rust-oleum products, two ITW American Safety products (AS-2500 and IMPAC 650), and Benjamin Moore’s M40 epoxy, to the product with the highest VOC of all HPCs evaluated, Armorseal 1000 HS (398 g/L).
Pharos Project users can readily identify the lowest VOC coatings from the product library by sorting the UseTox (IAQ and other Toxic User Exposure) column. The precise reported content is found just above the list of ingredients in individual product profiles.
As a group, High Performance Coatings fall far short of green building ideals. This is the current market reality. Within this reality, there are some clear differences in content and VOCs that a specifier can consider – by using the Pharos Project evaluative tools -- when she or he must choose HPCs.
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WHEN ZERO VOC DOES NOT MEAN ZERO VOCS: BEWARE THE TINTS
25 FEBRUARY
So, you picked a low- or no-VOC paint or high performance coating (HPC) and it still smells. What went wrong? It might be the tints.
Listings of the VOC level in product literature for paints and HPCs generally only account for the un-tinted base product. Each ounce of colorant added to tint your paint or HPC may contain anywhere between 5 and 20 grams of VOCs. For a subtle off-white tint, requiring an ounce or less of colorant, this may not significantly affect the overall VOC content of the coating. A rich or dark-tinted color, however, could require 5-10 ounces of colorant, and the impact could be significant, adding 100 or more grams of VOCs per liter of paint or HPC.
Furthermore, some manufacturers add substantially more VOCs to the base products designed for deep colors, effectively doubling the VOC content before tints are even added. In the Pharos Project, the net result could be to drop a product by up to four (4) points on the IAQ and other Toxic User Exposure (UseTox) scale.
What to do? If you are selecting a deep or dark tint, confirm that your base is still low- or no-VOC. Then, ask your distributor for VOC-free tinting. Several paint and HPC manufacturers now offer VOC-free colorant lines. Some examples are AFM Safecoat, Benjamin Moore, ICI Freshaire, and Mythic paints and International Building Products high performance coatings.
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