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.

The Pharos Project is a project of the Healthy Building Network. HBN is:

In Vermont:
Melissa Coffin, Bill Walsh

In California:
Tom Lent

In Washington, DC:
Larry Kilroy, Sarah Gilberg, Sarah Pickell, Susan Sabella

In Maine:
Jim Vallette

PVC BUILDING PRODUCTS MANUFACTURER TOPS DIOXIN DUMPING LIST

 
A manufacturer of PVC pipe, vinyl siding and other building and consumer products is now reportedly the number one source of dioxin releases in the country. A recent assessment of the EPA's Toxics Release Inventory, by the Institute for Southern Studies identified Westlake Vinyls in Calvert City, KY as the worst dioxin polluter in 2010, reporting releases of over 14,000 grams -- more than 31 pounds -- of dioxins and dioxin-like compounds to surface waters in 2010 alone. Dioxins are among the most potent toxicants known to science, very persistent and bioaccumulative with health concerns including cancer and reproductive toxicity. Current European exposure limits range as low as 1 picogram per kilogram of body weight per day - one-trillionth of a gram. The EPA is expected to suggest even lower limits in its long awaited upcoming dioxin reassessment.

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KAISER PERMANENTE KICKS PVC & PHTHALATES OUT OF MEDICAL EQUIPMENT

 
Kaiser Permanente has made a major step in its program to reduce its use of chemicals of concern, announcing this week that it will switch to IV bags that do not use PVC and DEHP and IV tubing without DEHP. PVC (Polyvinyl chloride) plastic and the phthalate DEHP (di-2-ethyl hexyl phthalate) used to make it flexible are both widely used in medical products and have been shown to have a wide range of harmful effects on health.  Kaiser Permanente, the largest managed care organization in the US, purchases almost 5 million IV tubing sets and over 9 million solution bags each year totaling nearly 100 tons of medical equipment.

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DIRTY ENERGY CLEANUP SHIFTS BURDEN TO BUILDING MATERIALS

 
The compartmentalization of environmental policies can create escape valves for pollution.  Regulations that do not reduce toxic inputs lead to a transfer of hazards. We have seen this, for example, with solid waste regulations. In the 1980s, when new regulations forced major disposal practice changes, waste generators took advantage of a lack of export controls.  They followed the path of least resistance and tried to ship waste to Africa, Haiti, and Bangladesh.

We are seeing a similar story unfold with pollutants generated by coal-fired power plants. The EPA took a huge, and long-awaited, step toward controlling toxic air emissions from coal power plants last month.  It released rules that, when fully implemented by 2016, will limit the air emissions of toxic contaminants of coal, such as mercury, arsenic, chromium, and sulfur dioxide.

Since coal fired power production is going to continue, these contaminants have to go somewhere.  While one outlet (the smokestack) is under the regulatory gun, another outlet lies wide open: the unregulated commercial use of solid waste captured from pollution control devices.

Many power generators have equipped newer plants with flue gas desulfurization (FGD) units to comply with EPA air rules, existing and forthcoming.  FGD pollution control devices capture and concentrate many of the EPA-targeted air emissions. And wastes from these FGD units are coming to a house, office, hospital, or school near you. In fact, they probably already have.

FGD waste – marketed as “synthetic gypsum” – has become a common ingredient in some building materials, particularly wallboard (also commonly known as drywall). The EPA says it “strongly supports this practice.”

As the new air rules are implemented, we can expect more transfers of air pollutants into building materials. So far, the EPA has declined to regulate this material as “hazardous waste.”

The material flow is as unregulated as when the city of Philadelphia dumped its incinerator ash on a beach in Haiti, back in 1988.  Then, too, waste traders tried to convince residents that ash makes a good “building material.”  

Residues collected from FGD units are now the leading material used in wallboards. Over the past decade, wallboard manufacturers moved most of their production plants from mines to coal-fired power plants.  The lower cost of FGD gypsum[1] compared to mined material, and incentives to incorporate recycled ingredients (including waste products) into building materials, drove the dramatic – and little recognized – transformation of North American-made wallboard.

Commodification disperses contaminants downstream. The first point of dispersal is in building material production processes, where the heating of FGD gypsum can release toxic heavy metals.  For a while, the toxicants may then be contained within the physical structure of the finished material.  But encapsulation lasts only so long. Ultimately, buildings and building materials are demolished and discarded or recycled.   Drywall equals about 15% of all construction and demolition (C&D) debris.  This debris winds up in new drywall, landfills, and even in some agricultural applications.

The subject of coal waste product commodification has been a side issue in coal fired energy debates – so far.  The transfer of toxic coal contaminants into the indoor environment will grow.  As time and mass increase, impacts could too, and we will begin to more fully understand the scope of shifted burdens.   The unregulated experiment has barely begun. 

[1] A 2004 Ohio State University estimate put the price of synthetic gypsum at $7/ton, compared to $12.75/ton for natural gypsum. http://ohioline.osu.edu/anr-fact/0020.html

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THIRD-PARTY CERTIFICATIONS: FRONT AND CENTER IN PHAROS V2

 
One of the most striking changes in the new version of Pharos (which can be previewed here) is the positioning of third-party certifications and standards used in scoring in a simplified and straightforward way.
 
Pharos considers a product's certification from 48 certifying bodies in the calculation of scores for VOC, User Toxics, and Renewable Materials.

In the original Pharos system these certifications were listed deep within the scoring frameworks for each scoring attribute, and appeared as an admittedly overwhelming list of certifications and their variations: SCS Indoor Advantage Gold (Residential) versus Indoor Advantage Gold (+ Formaldehyde Free), versus Indoor Advantage Gold, for example.

But no more! In v2, all of the certifications and standards used to calculate scores can be found in one place - the Evaluation Framework tab in the navigation bar.  Here the certifications can be browsed as a complete list, browsed by category (Biobased, Recycled Content, etc.), or searched by name or organization.  Certifications can also be sorted by how they score in Pharos impact categories.

Each certification's detailed view includes a description, direct links for more information, an explanation of how the certification impacts product scoring, and a link to view a list of products in the Pharos Building Product Library claiming that certification.  With the imminent release of Pharos team tools, subscribers will also be able to add personal or company tags to certifications to enable easy saving and sharing.

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BILL WALSH REFLECTS ON POSITIVE TRENDS AT GREENBUILD

 

Bill Walsh, Executive Director of the Healthy Building Network, reflects on positive trends seen at Greenbuild 2011.  Building product manufacturers are getting more involved with disclosure and transparency initiatives, customers are clarifying their demand for product information with the Health Product Declaration Open Standard, and manufacturers are increasingly using Pharos to communicate both with their customers and with their suppliers to create healthier products.

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PHAROS V2: SHOW US WHAT YOU’RE MADE OF!

 
I think you’re really going to like Pharos v2.

I could talk about how improved user interface and workflow features will save your firm time and money, while increasing your control over your building product specifications throughout the construction schedule.  But you can read about that in our press release.  Or better yet, take a free trial and see for yourself.

What I really want to talk about with Pharos subscribers and blog readers is why these tools really matter, to you and us.  Let’s not confuse the means with the ends.  In the end, Pharos is not just about making you more efficient in your work, it’s about making you more effective in your mission:  transforming the building materials market to be a driver for best environmental, health and social equity practices.  

You have made clear, and we agree, that the best way to achieve the ideal of living buildings and a regenerative industry is through transparency.  And transparency is breaking out all over in the building products industry: from manufacturer-led Environmental Product Disclosures to the customer led Health Product Declaration Open Standard, to a proposed LEED credit that could create incentives for both.  

But transparency alone will be, at the same time, both “not-enough” and “too-much” of a good thing.  There’s a big difference between choking down a crate of organic vegetables, cooking them up into a nourishing meal, and understanding them as the basis for inventing new cuisine.  It might seem like a stretch to suggest a comparison between Pharos and el Bulli, but we think that the data geeks out there – you know who you are, and we know who you are – won’t flinch at the extended metaphor.  

Forward leaning manufacturers have provided us with the finest ingredients: honest data.  We treat that with the respect it deserves. Everyone at the table will be nourished professionally, and some of you will be inspired to co-create a new way to appreciate the bounty.

Pharos v2 gives manufacturers an unsurpassed platform for distinguishing their companies and products to their customers.  It gives customers an unprecedented capability to aggregate and amplify their preferences into clear market signals to their suppliers.  It offers everyone a place at the table, and the tools to participate, communicate, and collaborate on a transformational agenda.  We can’t wait to see what we cook up.  Take a seat & show us what you’re made of!

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COMING SOON TO PHAROS SUBSCRIBERS: POWERFUL NEW RESEARCH & COLLABORATION TOOLS

 
You spoke; we listened. In the coming weeks, we will be launching Pharos Version 2: the in-depth, transparent product and material information you have come to rely upon, with expanded capabilities and tools.

NEW Team Tools - We have dramatically increased the collaboration capabilities of Pharos for your company and project teams. Pharos users will be able to create product lists, save searches, use tags and share data and preferences within your company or in collaboration with other subscribers on a project team.

The new Pharos team tools will reduce the time and energy you spend communicating your firm's product specifications to clients, colleagues, and others; eliminate redundant research; make it easier to identify multiple qualifying products; and increase your control over substitutions throughout the construction schedule.

Other highlights include:

• Redesigned product profile view - emphasizes the pros and cons of a product at a glance, and compares it to other products in its category; lets you see health hazards of material contents without leaving the product profile page.

• Redesigned chemical profile view - identifies environmental and health hazards ordered by level of concern, as well as restricted substance lists and life cycle impacts (see a sneak peek of part of a profile page here).

• NEW Site-wide text search - enables you to find products, chemicals, blogs and more by name, keyword, manufacturer, etc.

• NEW Certifications library - evaluates over 100 common product certifications; helps you compare them and understand how they affect scores in Pharos.

• And more! - more transparent information about the Pharos team and our research process; redesigned blog; updated and easier-to-read information about our scoring protocols; user administration tools for team and firm subscriptions; and other site improvements.

Pharos V2 is coming your way soon. Stay tuned for further updates.

Not yet subscribed? Visit our signup page.

Also coming soon: new product categories! We are preparing roofing membranes and wood flooring for opening in the coming weeks.

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LEED 2012 DRAMATICALLY SHIFTS MATERIAL SELECTION CRITERIA – COMMENT BY 9/14

 
With the LEED 2012 draft now open for public comment (through next Wednesday Sept 14) the USGBC is proposing a whole suite of new credits that together propose to radically change how manufacturers assess, disclose and formulate the products with which we build.

As described in our Healthy Building Network newsletter today, one of the most positively transformative could be the "Avoidance of Chemicals of Concern in Building Materials" which rewards disclosure of ingredients and avoidance of chemicals on a red list, proposed to be the California Prop 65 list in the draft. HBN strongly endorses the intent of the credit and welcomes the USGBC effort which we expect to reinforce the advances we have been making with the Pharos Project to encourage full disclosure.

The devil is in the details, however, and it will be critical to get the details right in this credit to avoid it becoming a vehicle for greenwash. There are a number of issues we see as important to the effectiveness of the credit including:

• defining disclosure and picking the right red list of chemicals to avoid;

• focusing on interior products;

• rewarding verification; and

• providing sufficient points to encourage engagement and improvement.

This credit is a good first step in a progression, and we call on the USGBC to signal where it is going with this measure.  Future versions (2014) should both address health impacts elsewhere in the life cycle and should make disclosure of product content a prerequisite.  

I’ve described HBN's suggestions for refining the Chemicals of Concern credit in more detail in LEEDuser. We encourage you to read our proposals and add your comments there. According to the LEEDuser website, "substantive comments posted here during USGBC's second public comment period will be submitted to USGBC and considered 'official' public comment." Of course you are also encouraged to comment on the LEED Public Comment page.

Other Key Issues in LEED 2012

While you are in LEEDuser, participate in some of the other important discussions of material issues in the LEED 2012 draft. The Non-Structural Materials Transparency credit is also aimed at increasing transparency but through Environmental Product Declarations (EPDs). This one warrants engagement as well with significant issues addressing forestry impacts and substantial questions about the proposal to credit generic industry average EPDs.  Join the discussions in LEEDuser here and here and help focus this credit to be most useful. EPDs should become very useful tools as their use increases but they have serious limits in some areas of health and resource extraction and are not at this time a replacement for rigorous third party standards such as FSC.

Speaking of wood, the FSC-SFI debate that has wracked the USGBC for years has taken a new twist in LEED 2012 with the advancement of the LCA/EPD issue and addition of several credits that reward products simply for being biobased.  Knowing from ours and others' assessments that being biobased is no guarantee of sustainability, reduced climate impact or improved health, we recommend seriously considering the issues being raised in LEEDuser here and in this statement endorsed by a variety of NGOs. We agree that the new Responsible Sourcing of Raw Materials credit, while still needing some adjustments, represents a major step forward in addressing the environmental and social impacts of the extraction of non-wood materials.

Finally, there are good materials developments in the EQ section to reinforce as well. Some important criteria developed in LEED for Healthcare are ready to move into the rest of LEED (see LEEDuser discussion here). We are concerned about the proposal to drop VOC content restrictions from indoor wet applied materials (see discussion here), but we are very pleased to see LEED 2012 is following the path first blazed by the GGHC and then LEED for Healthcare to extend VOC emissions testing to all interior finish materials.  

All in all, the draft LEED 2012 proposes some major shifts in how manufacturers are encouraged to assess, disclose and formulate the products with which we build. This is an important comment period in which to engage with some very important elements to support and many needing your input to reshape to be effective and avoid greenwash. Join the discussion and provide your comments by next Wednesday, September 14, 2011.

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LEED 2012 PROPOSES CONTENT DISCLOSURE & RED LIST CHEMICAL HAZARD AVOIDANCE

 
 “To increase the use of products and materials that disclose chemical ingredient data and reduce the concentrations of chemical contaminants that can damage air quality, human health, productivity, and the environment.” So reads the intent statement of a new LEED credit proposal released today by the US Green Building Council (USGBC). The credit represents an important advance for the LEED system in bringing healthy materials to building projects, encouraging both content disclosure and screening for chemicals of concern. The new credit, entitled “Avoidance of Chemicals of Concern in Building Materials” would reward building projects with one point toward LEED certification if 20% of all building products and materials, by cost, have a publicly available list of ingredients and do not include California Proposition 65 chemicals in their contents.

The USGBC released the proposed credit today as part of the second public comment draft for LEED 2012. The draft LEED release includes other important advances in materials selection addressing Extended Producer Responsibility (manufacturers taking responsibility for proper recycling of products at the end of life), responsible sourcing (to start to bring some scrutiny to mining and other extraction practices), VOC emissions testing for many more interior finish products, and a number of the toxics credits that were introduced in LEED-HC (mercury reduction in lamps, lead/cadmium/copper reduction, furniture ). There are a few material credits that are likely to warrant some more careful attention in this public comment period, including one that rewards use of biobased materials without scrutiny to the sustainability of their harvest beyond screening for legality, and the continued effort to find the right way to bring LCA into LEED.  

Kudos to the USGBC for this major effort to tackle health and other important sustainability measures in material selection.  The USGBC is seeking public comment through September 14. We will be commenting further on these credits, suggesting ways to make them even more effective, as we assess them over the next few weeks. In the meantime, download the proposed new credits on the LEED 2012 Rating System Draft page. Find more analysis and join the discussion of these and more credits in LEEDUser and find out more on the comment process on the LEED Rating System Development page.

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FROM COMPOST TO COMPOSITES: INNOVATING WITH COW PIES

 
Earlier this month I was introduced to a new product for Pharos, a line of wall boards and panels made from a blend of cellulose sources – recycled cardboard, old newsprint, and something near and dear to my Vermont heart: bovine processed fibers.  Yes, BPFs as they’re known, are the fibers left over from the anaerobic digestion tanks used to harvest methane from cow manure.  Otherwise a waste product, these and other animal-processed fibers contain lignin and proteins that make them well suited for a variety of bio-based applications.  And, with 2 trillion pounds of manure generated on American farms each year, being creative about what to do with it is a good thing.

Noble Environmental Technologies Corporation has launched its ECOR® line of bio-based panels made from blending these various fibers with water into a “stew” which gets poured out onto a mold before the water is suctioned, pressed, and steamed out, leaving just the fibers behind.  Once dry, the board is lightweight and made strong by the complex matrix of fibers created in the blending process.  ECOR® comes in flat sheets, a corrugated wave pattern, or a honeycomb shape achieved by slicing strips of the wave boards and attaching them with a water-based adhesive in a particular pattern.   The panels can be painted, veneered, and laminated to construct furniture and cabinetry, or molded into almost limitless shapes.  A look through their product catalog had me daydreaming about decorating a home in my future with curvy, sleek, modernly styled furniture and architectural build outs, all made with BPFs.  Because of their versatility, we’ve added ECOR® to our MDF/Particle Board category in the Building Products Library.

ECOR® products scored well in Pharos (6-8 out of 10 in VOC and toxicity categories depending on the amount of adhesive used), due to their high percentage of renewable content and Noble’s ability to fully disclose all of the product’s ingredients.  The basic boards can be used as-is, or can be treated with additives, coatings, or other processes to suit a particular function or impart a specific quality.  These extras have their own environmental and human health considerations, so the company is experimenting with different options to maintain as much of their relatively benign product profile as possible.

In addition to winning full points in my “best makeover” category, products made from BPFs have some other useful features:
•    They can be blended with other cellulose sources, including things like wood chips, to achieve the strength and performance profile needed for a given application.
•    Despite their humble beginnings, BPFs as part of a cellulose matrix are sanitary.  Researchers say heat and pressure from the manufacturing process kill any microbes that might be present, and as long as the board stays dry, it is no longer hospitable to microorganisms.  
•    Manure is a readily available waste product.  If a larger market for BPFs existed, sale of manure could someday represent a supplemental revenue stream for famers.  

For more information about BPFs, watch the short video Noble Environmental Technologies produced about the materials and processes used to manufacture ECORE®, or read this recent article in Biomass Magazine.

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A CHAT WITH PHAROS’ NEWEST TEAM MEMBER: MELISSA COFFIN

 
Greetings from Pharos headquarters in Washington, DC! We wanted to take the opportunity to introduce to our blog readers the newest member of the Pharos team, Melissa Coffin, who joins us in our Vermont office. I thought it might be nice for Pharos users to hear a little from her, as she is one of the main engines behind the Pharos Building Product Library.  In the spirit of our virtual work environment here at Pharos, I interviewed Melissa via Skype.  And in the spirit of transparency, which is what we’re all about here, I’ve left in some of the typos and other quirks that come with Skype conversations.

[7/13/11 3:17:37 PM]
susan.sabella: So, Melissa, you've been with the Pharos team for about two months now.  What's your role on the project?

[7/13/11 3:19:48 PM]
Melissa Coffin: My job title is Data Systems Project Leader, and my role is to shepherd products through the Pharos system, and assist manufacturers as necessary with questions they have about the process, the information being requested, and the addition of new products over time.

[7/13/11 3:20:39 PM]
Melissa Coffin: In-house I'm seen as a "data wrangler."

[7/13/11 3:20:58 PM]
susan.sabella: Nice -- a much better title than Data Systems Project Leader.

[7/13/11 3:22:32 PM]
susan.sabella: It sounds like you're engaging with manufacturers quite a bit.  And, I know you have considerable experience working with industry at your last position with the University of MA-Lowell -- how are you finding building product manufacturers to be?  Anything surprising?

[7/13/11 3:27:28 PM]
Melissa Coffin: It's really interesting.  I think companies are facing the same challenges with transparency no matter what sector they're in.  So far the manufacturers I've worked with have been great - strapped for time but committed to disclosing as much of their product ingredients as they can without jeopardizing their competitive edge.

[7/13/11 3:28:05 PM]
Melissa Coffin: No real surprises yet, but I'm just getting started!

[7/13/11 3:30:06 PM]
susan.sabella: What were you working on at Lowell?

[7/13/11 3:35:53 PM]
Melissa Coffin: I was the primary coordinator for a group of manufacturers, formulators, and retailers working to green their supply chains through the use of green chemistry.  The group is the Green Chemistry & Commerce Council, but we nic-named it the GC3 for short.  When I left Lowell it was a group of about 45 leading edge firms who were sort of peer-teaching each other some common lessons.  An approach that was successful for the apparel industry, for example, might also be exciting for the electronics sector, but the two may not have been in the same room before.  It was great to watch, and I learned a lot about finding creative ways to problem-solve.

[7/13/11 3:38:04 PM]
susan.sabella: Did each firm have a different focus in terms of greening its supply chain -- or did firm team up and work together on a particular issue or problem?  Were there any real successes?

[7/13/11 3:39:44 PM]
susan.sabella: I'll just note as well that 45 is a big number.  It sounds like the GC3 had some juice.

[7/13/11 3:43:45 PM]
Melissa Coffin: I think each company had its own twist on the supply chain work based on internal goals or corporate culture, or some other uniquity, but for the most part, everyone was struggling with the same problem: how can I ensure to my customer that my products are safe and environmentally preferable when I don't know what goes into my products beyond my immediate suppliers? Supply chains are global and very complex, and by the time you have a finished product, there's this web of ingredients and components and packaging, and it's a nightmare to understand all of these moving parts - but customers want you to understand them, and that's the challenge.

[7/13/11 3:44:39 PM]
Melissa Coffin: The GC3 wrote a guidance document to help manufacturers work with their suppliers to start collecting all of this information as a first step.

[7/13/11 3:46:31 PM]
susan.sabella: I think we see the same thing with the Pharos Project:  customers/Pharos users want to know what are in the building materials they are purchasing for their own projects or specifying for their clients.  This market's desire for transparency seems to really have taken hold.

[7/13/11 3:46:48 PM]
Melissa Coffin: Absolutely

[7/13/11 3:46:55 PM]
susan.sabella: Wow -- what's with my syntax today?  And my typing.  Sorry.

[7/13/11 3:51:52 PM]
Melissa Coffin: I think Pharos does a great job of providing some of that supply chain/web information to its users.  The CML allows you to look up an ingredient and find out what it's feedstocks are - and are any of those chemicals something I should be paying attention to?.  That's really invaluable, I think, to be able to track back and find out that the reason a finished product might have a low score in a particular attribute is because of one ingredient that's sourced from a problematic place, or is manufactured in a way that creates a toxic waste, or uses something as a catalyst that's been banned in Europe.  Pharos' research staff is really top notch and the CML is a reflection of a systems view of production.  I learn something new with every product I see, for sure.

[7/13/11 3:55:02 PM]
susan.sabella: I agree:  the CML (Pharos Chemical and Material Library) is an amazing tool with many applications.  It can be used in any sector, really.  If you care about chemicals, and the environmental and health impacts of chemcials, the CML is an incredible resource.

[7/13/11 3:55:14 PM]
susan.sabella: Of course, it helps to be a bit of a geek.

[7/13/11 3:55:30 PM]
Melissa Coffin: Yeah, and I've got that base covered.

[7/13/11 3:55:49 PM]
susan.sabella: You do indeed!

[7/13/11 3:56:06 PM]
susan.sabella: As you know, you're in good company here -- lots 'o geeks!

[7/13/11 3:56:20 PM]
Melissa Coffin: Yes, I feel quite at home here.

[7/13/11 3:57:22 PM]
susan.sabella: Which is great -- because you are a welcome addition to the Pharos team.  Is there anything else you want to share before we draw this to a close?

[7/13/11 3:58:34 PM]
Melissa Coffin: Thanks for the opportunity to introduce myself.

[7/13/11 3:59:00 PM]
susan.sabella: Yeah -- this has been fun.

[7/13/11 3:59:08 PM]
Melissa Coffin: I'm looking forward to many more building product category openings!

[7/13/11 3:59:22 PM]
susan.sabella: Woo-hoo!

[7/13/11 3:59:25 PM]
susan.sabella: Talk to you later.

[7/13/11 3:59:42 PM]
Melissa Coffin: Bey

[7/13/11 3:59:47 PM]
Melissa Coffin: Bye

[7/13/11 3:59:56 PM]
susan.sabella: Nice recovery!

[7/13/11 4:00:14 PM]
susan.sabella: DONE

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THE NO-FLY-ASH ZONE: ALTERNATIVE RECYCLED MATERIALS IN CARPET BACKING

 
A few weeks ago on the Signal blog, we examined some of the tradeoffs in choosing a carpet for its recycled content, particularly with regard to carpet backings made with coal fly ash, a coal combustion waste product which has been found to contain mercury and other hazardous heavy metals.  Pharos allows subscribers to evaluate not only complete carpet styles but also individual carpet components (fibers and backings), because we find a lot of innovation and differentiation at the component level.  Our research on carpet products and their components for the Pharos Building Product Library has led us to some interesting alternatives, including carpet backings that achieve high scores for recycled content without fly ash.

Tandus Flooring, for example, uses post-consumer recycled polyvinyl butyral (PVB) in ethos™ backings used in Powerbond resilient sheet flooring and modular carpet styles.
 
When we asked Tandus why they chose to develop this alternative, they attributed the choice largely to demand from a major customer.  Ross Leonard, Director of Marketing for Tandus Flooring, explained, “About ten years ago, Tandus Flooring was asked by Kaiser Permanente to collaborate with them in the development of a new type of floorcovering for their facilities.  Among the key criteria for this new floorcovering was that it had to made without chlorinated polymers, had to contain high levels of post-consumer recycled content that could be third-party certified, be fully recyclable using currently existing technology and processes and meet Kaiser Permanente’s demanding performance requirements.”
 
The decision to use PVB in particular was a result of over two years of exploration and evaluation by Tandus’ Research and Development Division.  “At the time, polyvinyl butyral (PVB) was a widely used plastic (primarily as the clear film laminated between glass in automotive windshields and other types of safety glass) but not as a floorcovering,” Leonard explained. “Better still, there appeared to be a healthy supply of post-consumer PVB since there are millions of cracked and chipped windshields that are replaced every year.  While the recyclers are equipped to recycle the glass components of windshields, there was no commercial use for the PVB flake that resulted as a byproduct until Tandus Flooring developed its innovative process.”

In Pharos, Tandus’ Powerbond ethos cushion backing earns a relatively high score of 6 in renewable materials for its use of 100% post-consumer PVB, and its ethos backing for modular tile earns a score of 3 for its mixed use of post-consumer and pre-consumer PVB.  Both of these products earn scores of 5 in user toxicity and in manufacturing and community toxics, the highest of any carpet backing evaluated in Pharos to date.

Pharos users can now view other cutting-edge, high-recycled-content carpet backing alternatives. Manufacturers submitted data for each of these backings. After rigorous data quality review processes, we have added these products to our product library in recent weeks:

• ECORE International, in partnership with Nood carpets, has developed the itstru Technology backing (a.k.a. TRU) made almost entirely (at least 97%) from post-consumer recycled styrene butadiene rubber (SBR).  This content earns it the maximum score of 10 for renewable/recycled materials. However, ECORE has not yet identified the balance of this product’s ingredients.  According to ECORE International, the formula for this new-to-the-market backing is proprietary; therefore, Pharos is unable to fully evaluate this product’s toxicity.  We do know that integral components of SBR are styrene, which was recently listed by the National Toxicology Program as a suspected carcinogen, and 1,3-butadiene, which EPA, IARC and other agencies have long listed as carcinogenic.  ECORE is also seeking Green Label Plus for Nood carpet styles that use this backing.

• InterfaceFLOR’s GlasBac RE backing earns a score of 7 in renewable materials. Over 73% of the backing is made from post-consumer vinyl carpet tile crumb. It also incorporates some post-industrial carpet fiber. However, the presence of diisononyl phthalate – an EPA-listed Chemical of Concern – in the vinyl crumb detracts from the backing’s manufacturing and user toxicity evaluations (4 and 3, respectively).

• Shaw Industries, Inc. has developed a custom carpet backing, EcoWorx PX, an alternative to its regular EcoWorx. Instead of post-industrial fly ash, Ecoworx PX contains post-consumer glass and/or residues derived from Shaw’s carpet recycling processes.  These residues are primarily calcium carbonate.  This content earns the backing a Pharos evaluation of 4 in renewable materials.  The manufacturing toxicity score for this product, however, fares no better than the standard EcoWorx (2), due to the use of Triclosan.  The State of Oregon Department of Environmental Quality lists Triclosan, a widely used antimicrobial, as a Tier 1 Priority Persistent Pollutant.

Tandus, Shaw, and Interface fully disclosed the material content of these innovative backings. Their data provides Pharos users with all the information they need to evaluate and compare these products’ environmental attributes.

Subscribers to Pharos can view the full profiles of these carpet backings and many more in the Building Product Library.  Pharos’ multi-attribute scoring allows users to weigh the costs and benefits of these products’ environmental and health impacts for their project needs.  We choose not to provide an overall score or ranking for these products because we know that our subscribers may prioritize these values in different ways.  One person’s recycled gold may be another’s poison.

We are continuing to engage with many carpet manufacturers. The Pharos platform has generated consumer / manufacturer discussions which will improve the recycled content and reduce the health impacts of carpet backings.  

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THE NINE TYPES OF GREENWASH

 
Greenwash, the practice of deceptively or falsely portraying products as environmentally friendly, is pervasive in the building materials market.  Sometimes it slaps you in the face, but other times, it takes a more discerning eye to find it. A few weeks ago, I had the pleasure of attending an excellent webinar presented by BuildingGreen’s Jennifer Atlee on Green Building Product Certifications.  Part of this presentation, which appears in BuildingGreen’s detailed certifications report, presents an expert breakdown of the “Nine Types of Greenwash.”  Here’s a hint: it’s not always in the label.

“The Nine Types of Greenwash,” coauthored by Atlee and Tristan Roberts, highlights not only the clearer examples of vague or unsubstantiated labeling and green associations, but also some more nuanced distinctions. For example, it lists “Forgetting the Life Cycle aka The Red Herring” as the practice of touting one environmental benefit while ignoring other harmful impacts.  We see this effect often in products that may, for example, have high recycled content but release toxic chemicals in their manufacturer or use.  Greenwash can also be found beyond the level of the product itself, manifesting in the policies and standards that a company chooses to fight or support.  For example, a company may publicly endorse environmental measures while privately lobbying to resist or weaken them – this type of greenwash is nicknamed “The Reluctant Enthusiast.”

The full list and description of the “Nine Types of Greenwash” is now available on BuildingGreen.com, as is a recording of the full certifications webinar.

A big part of our work here at the Pharos Project is promoting transparency, and we work to provide a complete picture of products’ environmental and health impacts so as to cut through the greenwash.  Unspecific or unproven claims are not rewarded in Pharos scores for a product, and progress in one impact area, while admirable, does not make up for poor performance in another.  This helps our subscribers to more carefully weigh the true impacts of products, and to pick out the true market leaders from the sea of green-marketed products.

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REFLECTIONS OF AN INTERN

 
As another beautiful summer rolls around, it is, once again, the time for summer interns around the nation to populate corporate offices! I, Victoria Adams, am one of these interns; I am an architecture student and summer intern at HKS, Inc. in Dallas, Texas. I attend Texas A&M University where in the fall I will continue my second year on the path to obtaining a bachelors degree in Environmental Design. Part of my daily work at HKS includes contributing to the data entry for the Pharos Project, therefore acting as an active member of the Pharos intern team. A couple of HBN Pharos staff members have requested that I share some of my discoveries, points of view, thoughts, etc. related to the Pharos Project periodically throughout the summer; and so it begins!

Data entry for the Pharos Project was a seemingly monumental task at first glance. Material Safety Data Sheets, 10 part Specification Sheets, manufacturing facilities; so much information was to be comprehended and documented. Once I became acquainted with the process, I renounced my insecurities and realized all that is required is a careful sifting of information. The Material Safety Data Sheet (MSDS) and other product data are often easily accessible on the internet, making this sifting fairly simple. With the recent movement in society to render manufacturing processes and product content transparent, acquiring the product documentation is not the issue. The content of the documentation or lack of content poses the challenge in this search.

A recurring problem is the absence of the material makeup of products in their MSDS. The MSDS is a continuously referenced document in information entry because of the specific chemical information that is supposed to be included. Many times the part of the Material Safety Data Sheet reserved for the material listing is nothing but a blank square inside a barren chart. The EPA Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA) exemptions allow for these manufacturers’ elusive material listings. There is a section of the product information on the Pharos site that is dedicated exclusively to the material composition of the product meant for the transferring of this information. The product’s MSDS often leaves this initial entry very sparse. This chemical and material data is used to identify health hazards, purpose and use of product, etc.  Therefore, having this information is imperative to aid the informed consumer’s opinion of the product. This is only a little taste of one road bump on the highway to publicizing product information. Though the Pharos Project is generating swift progress towards driving the building product market to become transparent, there is still progress to be made because of setbacks such as these.

I feel that in the short month that I have been working on Pharos for HBN, I have seen much growth and progress within Pharos. Despite the setbacks, large or small, the HBN Pharos staff forges ahead and assists the less experienced (interns) in their trials as well; utilizing open communication and a positive attitude. I am very excited to continue to contribute to the Pharos Project and anxious to witness the growth that will come this summer.

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US AGENCY CALLS OUT FORMALDEHYDE & STYRENE FOR CANCER

 
A two decade lobbying effort by industry has finally ended unsuccessfully with the US Department of Health & Human Service labeling formaldehyde as a known carcinogen. The congressionally mandated 12th Report on Carcinogens adds to assessments by a range of agencies from the state of California to EPA and the World Health Organization confirming the cancer-causing nature of this widely used chemical.  Formaldehyde-based compounds are widely used in building materials – most often as the glue that binds plywood, particle board, laminates, insulation and other products, but also as additives in drywall and treatments for fabrics. We’ve reported previously on efforts to reduce formaldehyde emissions from composite wood, the concerns of formaldehyde based binders in insulation and the progress being made to put alternative insulations on the market. Pharos helps you avoid formaldehyde by explicitly flagging its presence in products and allowing filtering of any search results to screen out all products using formaldehyde-based compounds.

While the formaldehyde announcement got the most attention, the styrene listing is arguably at least as important.  Termed “reasonably anticipated to be a carcinogen” in the report, this is the strongest authoritative assessment of the cancer potential of styrene to be published to date. Styrene already raised concerns for asthma, neurotoxicity, endocrine disruption and other health issues, but in Pharos scoring this cancer listing moves styrene from an orange (high concern) to a red (very high concern) flag and may affect toxicity scoring on a range of styrene containing products. Styrene is a building block of EPS and XPS foam insulations which were already under attack for a range of other human and environmental health reasons. Styrene is also used in high performance coatings and may remain as a residual contaminant in the contents of a wide range of Pharos-listed floorings, carpet backings and adhesives that are made of styrene butadiene rubber (SBR).  Click to see Pharos listings of products containing SBR. Remember that you can find product containing any chemical of concern by looking up its record in the Chemical and Material Library and clicking the red "Show products that contain this material" button.

The only easing of pressure on industry from this report came from the slight downgrading of concern for glass wool fibers in insulation, noting that they are less durable and bio-persistent than special purpose fibers  and so less likely to cause cancer. Beware of the of glass wool fibers use in high-efficiency air filters and acoustical insulation, however, as those fibers are more likely to cause problems.

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VIDEO: CHOOSING COMMERCIAL CARPET WITH PHAROS

 
Our partners at BuildingGreen made a great video demonstrating how to use Pharos to choose a commercial carpet.  This 5-minute demo includes how to use our carpet assembler, how to drill down into the product data in a product profile, and how to use filters to narrow a product search.

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PHAROS: UNBINDING THE SECRET WORLD OF FLOORING ADHESIVES

 
Adhesives and sealants grip much of the building material marketplace.  Some binders hold cellulose particles in place in substrates; others forge gypsum slurries into wallboard and ceiling tile, fuse carpet backings, and encapsulate wood flooring.

The degree of scrutiny that adhesives and sealants receive can depend upon physical circumstances.  When adhesives are integral to a product - like formaldehyde-based resins in particleboard or casework - these chemicals are examined in the context of the product as a whole. But when the adhesive is separate from a building material until it is installed, even when manufacturers require its use, specifiers have faced an analysis gap.

The Pharos system makes its first attempt at linking evaluations of adhesives with the products that require them in today’s opening of the flooring adhesives category.  Flooring adhesives are our tenth category of building product profiles.

Now Pharos users may, with one click, examine whether a carpet or resilient flooring they are considering requires an adhesive that raises alarm.   In the Pharos Data Team Notes section of flooring product profiles, we have added links to our evaluations of adhesives that the flooring manufacturer requires or recommends.

Many adhesives contain chemicals of concern.  Epoxy adhesive systems, for example, rely on the binder material, BADGE, which is formed from Bisphenol A, and epichlorohydrin.   Bisphenol A is under great scrutiny because of its effects on the hormonal and reproductive system. And polyurethane adhesives may contain methylene diisocyanate in an "uncured" form, to which "people may be exposed," according to an April 2011 EPA press release. According to the EPA, isocyanate exposure is a leading cause of work-related asthma.

Adhesives are highly specialized concoctions.  Chemical variants in water-based acrylic and latex adhesives can include elastomers, tackifiers, fillers, plasticizers, stabilizers, viscosity control agents, preservatives, and antioxidants.   Sometimes, these aqueous dispersions contain surfactants like nonylphenol and nonylphenol ethoxylates, which the US EPA recently defined as compounds of concern.   And some adhesives contain the propellant HFC-134a, a chemical with a very high global warming potential.

With such variations in chemistry, manufacturer transparency is vital.  Fortunately, some manufacturers are already participating in Pharos and providing full material content disclosure.  Industry leaders like HB Fuller, Tandus, Nydree, and Capri Cork have already submitted adhesive products for Pharos evaluation.  We expect that many other companies also will find value in fully participating in Pharos, especially as our users request that they do so.

The industry has responded before to human health concerns.  The majority of flooring adhesives once relied on organic solvent-based chemistry.  After users and regulators became alarmed at high Volatile Organic Compound emissions, the industry largely replaced organic solvent chemistry with water-based dispersions and reactive chemistries.   An association of US manufacturers is exploring these challenges. It will hold the Adhesive and Sealant Council Sustainability Summit next month in Chicago.

Further details about flooring adhesives and our Pharos evaluations can be found in our product category description.  Our new Materials Research Collaborative (MRC) assisted the research used in this category opening.  The MRC is a joint effort of the Healthy Building Network and BuildingGreen, which today published an overview of adhesive selection consideration in its June edition of Environmental Building News.

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PHAROS BUILDING PRODUCT LIBRARY ADDS ANOTHER LAYER: DECORATIVE LAMINATES

 
We are pleased to announce the opening of our ninth category in the Pharos Building Product Library: decorative laminates.

While the term laminate can refer to any product with layers of material glued together (such as plywood), the laminate products currently covered in this section of Pharos are decorative laminates - specifically the "high pressure laminates" (HPLs) that are commonly used as water resistant, decorative surfacing for countertops, work surfaces, casework and paneling.  These are typically comprised of cellulose fiber (often Kraft paper) impregnated with thermosetting formaldehyde-based resins, and bonded via heat and high pressure.  Variations include the application of decorative paper, sometimes with fire-resistant or chemical-resistant additives.

Pharos evaluations of these products find wide variances in the amount of material content disclosure by manufacturers, indoor air quality certifications, recycled content, and sustainable forestry certifications.

An industry leader in disclosure, recycled content, and sustainable forestry certification is Wilsonart.   Over a year ago, Pharos staff contacted leading manufacturers of laminates.  Some have started to enter product data, but have yet to submit their products for review and evaluation.  Wilsonart did not hesitate.

Anthony Woytek, Product Development Specialist for Wilsonart, recalls that the company was first approached by Pharos staff at the Greenbuild 2009 conference in Phoenix.

"Our director of sustainability (Rajesh Ramamurthy) and our corporate president (Bill DiGaetano) made the decision to move forward and participate.  It's a good tool.  As a company we're trying to provide more information to people to make more informed decisions when choosing their building products," said Mr. Woytek.  "We're dedicated to sustainability and we made a conscious decision to be more transparent."

Last year, Wilsonart was the first major decorative laminate manufacturer to bring FSC-certified products to market.   In recent weeks, Nevamar and Formica have responded in kind.   Wilsonart is also leading the industry with high recycled content, and promises more is on the way.  "We're working across the board on recycled content, so that would help our (Pharos) scores even more.  We get a lot of inquiries on LEED projects, which are driving the market demand for high recycled and FSC-certified content."

Consumer demand, combined with leadership in the manufacturing sector, is driving sustainability and transparency in building materials industries.  With support from Pharos users, we hope other decorative laminate manufacturers will join Wilsonart in providing full disclosure so consumers may fully evaluate their products in the context of sustainability.

The Pharos Building Product Library now evaluates over 650 products and components in nine product categories: decorative laminates, thermal insulation, standard paints, resilient flooring, wallboard, ceilings, high performance coatings, MDF/particleboard, and carpet.

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COMMON TRADEOFFS IN CHOOSING A CARPET: MANY SHADES OF RECYCLED

 
Our carpet category is ever-evolving as we continue to engage manufacturers in submitting and reviewing data on their products.  On the surface, many of the carpet styles you’ll find in Pharos may look similar in their environmental and health impacts, but some key differences can be found in their components.

For carpet backings in particular, manufacturers use a range of materials to increase their recycled content, including coal fly ash, glass cullet, polyvinyl butyral, and vinyl.  Of particular concern is the use of coal fly ash as a replacement for traditional limestone filler.  

Over the past decade, LEED recycled material credits and government agencies have encouraged the incorporation of coal fly ash into carpet backings and other building materials.   Coal-fired power plant owners and fly ash marketing corporations (namely Boral Materials) capitalized upon these endorsements by moving wastes into the built environment. A Boral website states that "Coal combustion products are endorsed by the U.S. EPA and the US Green Building Council for use in construction materials."

As coal-fired power plant air pollution control (APC) technology improves, more of these heavy metals are "scrubbed" from gas releases and concentrated in coal fly ash and other coal combustion wastes.  The health effects of this material on the workers who process it – and on the indoor environment – are largely untested.  Therefore, in Pharos, carpet backings containing generic coal fly ash will tend to score better in the Renewable/Recycled Materials category, but worse in their User Toxics and Manufacturer Toxics scores.  

The toxicological composition of fly ash is changing due to the introduction of powdered activated carbon to capture of mercury from flue gas.   Boral itself says in one presentation, "Deteriorating fly ash quality represents both a major challenge and a huge opportunity."[1]

"Changes in Air Pollution Control technologies will result in a greater amount of residue generated for each unit of electricity produced and an overall increase in the total content of mercury and other hazardous air pollutants in fly ash, FGD residues, and other APC residues," EPA researchers reported in a recent journal article.[2]

The EPA studied 34 fly ash samples and 20 samples of Flue Gas Desulfurization gypsum.[3]   Their test results indicated that some fly ash samples exceeded Toxicity Characteristic values for arsenic, barium, chromium, and selenium. Fly ash test results also exceeded Maximum Concentration Levels or Drinking Water Equivalent Levels[4] for nine metals: antimony, arsenic, barium, boron, cadmium, chromium, molybdenum, selenium, and thallium.  

Coming soon, we'll take a closer look at some high recycled content carpet backings for which manufacturers have opted to use materials other than coal fly ash. These companies are participating in Pharos and are fully disclosing their carpet ingredients. For more information on carpets and carpet components, explore the Pharos Building Product Library, and see our carpet category description for more detailed analysis from our research team.

Footnotes:

[1] "USA Analyst Site Visit 2008," Boral, available at: www.boral.com/Images/common/pdfs/Part2_US_Business_Pres.pdf

[2] S. Thorneloe, D. Kosson, F. Sanchez, A. Garrabrants, and G. Helms,  "Evaluating the Fate of Metals in Air Pollution Control Residues from Coal-Fired Power Plants," Environ. Sci. Technol. 2010, 44, 7351-7356.

[3] This article focuses on carpet backings and the toxicological profile of fly ash that may be used in them, so the FGD gypsum results are not recited here. However, FGD gypsum is used in other indoor building materials – particularly wallboard and ceiling tiles.   The results of the EPA sampling of FGD gypsum reinforces concerns about the composition of wallboard and ceiling tiles that are comprised of up to 95% FGD gypsum:  the EPA study found that many samples exceeded TC values for selenium and MCL or DWEL for eight metals: antimony, arsenic, barium, cadmium, chromium, molybdenum, selenium, and thallium.

[4] Toxicity Concentration levels are used in crafting hazardous waste determinations.  DWEL is used for noncarcinogenic toxicity end points.

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EPA TARGETS POLYURETHANE CHEMISTRY IN SPRAY FOAMS, ADHESIVES & COATINGS

 
Last week the US EPA put the building industry on notice that it is planning steps to protect the public from asthma and other respiratory problems from two of the fundamental building blocks of polyurethane.

Methylene Diphenyl Diisocyanate (MDI) and Toluene Diisocyanate (TDI) join a growing list of EPA Chemicals of Concern that are widely used in building materials, including phthalates in vinyl flooring, bisphenol A in epoxies, HBCD and PBDE flame retardants in foam insulation, PFCs in carpet stain treatments and more (All are listed in the Pharos description of current EPA Chemicals of Concern). Action Plans on each of these describe serious health risks for the general public and outline possible voluntary and regulatory steps the EPA is considering to protect public health.   

The EPA expressed particular concern for hazards from the growing use of MDI and TDI compounds in spray foams, adhesives and coatings. The polyurethane compounds made from MDI and TDI are considered relatively inert and benign. But mixing up and site-applying these products in the building instead of in a controlled factory setting can lead to major exposures to the raw uncured and hazardous diisocyanates for workers during installation and for building occupants for anywhere from days to months afterwards.

All of the spray polyurethane foam insulations in Pharos currently use these diisocyanates, adding to the dangers of sprayed polyurethanes that we’ve reported on earlier in this blog.

MDI & TDI are also found in products in the Pharos listings for polyurethane carpet backings, MDF and wheatboards and some recycled rubber floorings which aren’t as likely to have major quantities of uncured diisocyanates but cause serious toxic exposure problems for the factory workers who make these products.  According to the EPA, isocyanate exposure is the leading cause of work-related asthma.

Watch for the EPA Chemicals of Concern red attribute flag in product profiles as you select products in Pharos or use the EPA Chemicals of Concern filter to avoid all products containing any of the targeted chemicals.

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RECENT PRODUCT ADDITIONS IN PAINTS AND FLOORINGS SCORE HIGH IN PHAROS

 

It has been a busy couple of months as we’ve been working on rolling out carpets and preparing for new product category openings, but we’ve also been adding to our existing product categories, and we have some exciting new additions.

In the interior paints category, the new ENSO™ line of products by Dunn Edwards Corporation achieves a high score of 9 for VOCs and a high score of 6 for User Toxics.  These scores reflect that the products have zero VOC content (including exempted compounds), and that they meet the strictest available standards for VOC emissions.  (Points are deducted from the User Toxics category because the company has not yet fully disclosed its material contents.)

In the resilient flooring category, the Atmosphere line of products by To Market achieves a high score of 7 for VOCs (reflecting FloorScore certification) and 7 for Renewable Energy (reflecting 100% of total manufacturing energy from renewable energy sources within 50 miles of the manufacturing facility).  Some products in the line also achieve high marks for Renewable Materials.  For example, Atmosphere 1 (Solid Black) Recycled Rubber Flooring gets a 9 for Renewable Materials because almost 90% of the product is 100% post-consumer recycled styrene butadiene rubber.

As with all products listed in Pharos, these ones have room for improvement, but we are heartened by the progress we are seeing in these categories as manufacturers strive to create products that are healthier for people and for the environment.
 

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GOOGLE'S COMMITMENT TO TRANSPARENCY IN BUILDING MATERIALS

 

At a recent event hosted by Colliers International examining real estate trends in Silicon Valley, George Salah, Director of Real Estate and Workplace Services for Google, Inc., spoke about the company’s commitment to transparency and its use of the Pharos Project as a tool for selecting healthy materials. 

DBusinessNews reports:

“Speaker George Salah spoke on the high standards that Google employs and its commitment to sustainability. ‘We care about healthy buildings and non-toxic materials. These days, I spend most of my time trying to get transparency in the marketplace so that we know what’s in the materials that we buy.’ Salah lauded the efforts of some agencies’ commitment to transparency while suggesting that others could do more. ‘We talk to a lot of people who are the experts in the field. One that is doing a fabulous job is the Pharos Project. Pharos provides a tool for making good decisions about the building materials we buy every day. Additionally, it provides critical health and environmental data about the manufacture, use, and end of life of building materials. It’s a tool that gives you a visual representation of materials, what’s in them, how they rank and how good or bad they are for your health based on science.’”

We greatly appreciate the participation of Google, Inc., and other firms who are demanding transparency in the building materials market.  If you or your company would like to get involved, you can sign up with the Pharos Project here. 

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PHAROS ROLLS OUT CARPETS

 

The Pharos Project is pleased to announce that a new product category – carpets – is now open for users to explore.

Last year, we asked Pharos users to help us develop the category.  You wanted separate evaluations of fibers, and backings, and a way to evaluate a carpet assembly as a whole. From your feedback, we prioritized components and created a new selection tool.

The Pharos carpet library includes a wide variety of components that you can evaluate separately and within a complete assembly.  These include commonly specified polyurethane, polyolefin, EVA, PVC, and bitumen backings, and fibers that include a range of recycled content. We also evaluate treatments, in particular anti-microbials and stain resistance systems.

Due to the complexity of carpet assemblies, the Pharos product evaluation search for carpets operates differently from other categories.  At its primary search level, through the Building Product Library (BPL), Pharos users first select a manufacturer, then a style sold by the manufacturer.  Users then select the face fiber and backing options for each style. 

Pharos generates a product profile based upon the user’s selections.  The profile evaluates the product as a whole. It also displays the components – fibers, backings, and treatments – from which the evaluation is created.   Clicking on the individual components yields much more information.   Users can also view the components individually through a subdirectory in the BPL.

Transparency

Our initial product listing includes dozens of carpet components and carpet styles sold by several of the largest carpet manufacturers.  These evaluations rely upon publicly available information. Data sources include company websites, patents, and industry and government life cycle assessments.  

With some carpet companies, we have found relative clarity in public documentation.  Environmental Product Declarations (EPDs) provide much more data than generally exists, but, to date, have produced an incomplete picture.  A couple of companies publish material safety data sheets and detailed on-line descriptions.  Some are participating in Pharos, and are submitting their products to a system that values transparency.  But, until 2011, the composition of key carpet components, like backings, has been largely untold.

Our Pharos users have described a glaring need for transparency in this industry.  In our survey, commercial firms ranked product composition second only to aesthetics in procurement selection strategies. Many of our users have urged manufacturers to submit their product information to Pharos.  Some, like Google, are making content disclosure a pre-requisite for inclusion in their building materials procurement. 

In lieu of ingredient disclosure by manufacturers in public documentation, we have developed generic records to fill the data gaps.  These generic records shed light on commonly-used ingredients in stainblockers and backings (unitary (SB Latex), polyurethane, and vinyl). 

The sources for our extensive research behind the Pharos evaluations are found by clicking on any score in a product profile.   This research reveals the many environmental challenges posed by the manufacturing of carpets and their components.

In the coming weeks and months, in Pharos Signal articles, we will review toxicological and content disclosure concerns about components commonly used in commercial carpet. And we will highlight some of the carpet industry’s positive effort in areas like renewable energy. Upcoming topics include:

• Stain and soil repellants.  Almost all commercial carpet manufacturers apply these stain and soil resistance treatments.  This has resulted in the dispersal of persistent bioaccumulative perfluorocarbons – which have been associated with developmental problems -- into the indoor air environment and waterways flowing from production sites.
• Anti-microbials.  Many manufacturers apply these treatments widely. Others apply them only to styles sold to certain sectors, such as health care. And some companies choose not to apply them at all. We will review the efficacy and diverse chemistry of these treatments.
• Recycled content.  Over the past decades, carpet manufacturers have boosted the recycled content of their products by adding a wide variety of fillers to backing systems.  There are big differences between types of recycled content, ranging from glass cullet to coal fly ash, which is classified as post-industrial recycled content. 
• Disclosure.  Material safety data sheets are few and far between. There is a glaring lack of clarity in many product descriptions, whether they are treatments or backings.   Some carpet manufacturers have begun producing Environmental Product Declarations (EPDs).  While EPDs do provide a superior level of disclosure to the routine, data holes remain. We hope to fill these gaps through continuing dialogue with these manufacturers.  
• Renewable energy.  Some carpet manufacturers are using bio-diesel, landfill gas, solar panels, and other alternate energy sources.  Some have made broad statements about their commitment to renewable energy, but do not provide enough specificity for us to properly evaluate their products.  Manufacturer engagement with Pharos will help us complete this picture.

We hope that our users will find the results enlightening, and we welcome your feedback.

Note: Subscribers to partner organization BuildingGreen's product suite can access a new article that details many of the concerns surrounding the use of anti-microbial and stain resistance treatments here.

 

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PHAROS UNCOVERS 46 PRODUCTS WITH CHEMICALS BANNED BY NEW REACH REGS

 

The European Union moved to ban five highly hazardous chemicals used in building materials plus a sixth chemical used in cleaning product fragrances under the REACH program last week.  In a Feb. 17 press release, the EU announced that these six “substances of very high concern will be banned within the next three to five years unless an authorization has been granted to individual companies for their use.”

HBN staff surveyed the products we’ve evaluated in the Pharos Project and found forty-six products that contained one of the targeted chemicals or were manufactured using one as a feedstock.  Some of the chemicals were targeted for the ban because they are persistent bioaccumulative toxicants (PBTs) that spread widely from their sources without degrading and are building up in increasing concentrations in humans.  The flame retardant HBCDD is one of them, and it is present in nine polystyrene foam insulation products evaluated by Pharos. For an excellent assessment of the likely insulation industry impact and reaction to the HBCD ban, read the excellent blog on the topic by Alex Wilson of BuildingGreen

The types of building products impacted by the REACH phase-out of MDA include high performance coatings, flooring adhesives, carpet backings, sprayed polyurethane foam insulation, composite wood, and resilient flooring compositions that contain polyurethane wear layers.   MDA - targeted because it is a known potent carcinogen - is an essential building block of methylene diisocyanates, commonly referred to as MDI.  MDI is used as a binder in wood composites. It is also used in combination with polyol mixtures in most polyurethane systems.  (Some polyurethanes avoid MDA chemistry by using toluene-based isocyanates). Twenty-one products evaluated by Pharos include MDI compounds in their material contents.  Another nine products list polyurethane as part of their content. It is unclear whether these products use MDI or alternative isocyanates in their composition.

Three of the substances covered by the REACH ban are phthalates - (BBP, DEHP and DBP). These hormone disrupting reproductive toxicants are used widely as a plasticizer to make PVC flexible and sometimes also to increase spreadability in paints and solvents flooring.   All seven vinyl floorings in the Pharos system are known or likely to include either BBP or DEHP. Many of the vinyl flooring manufacturers have refused to disclose their ingredients, but our patent and industry practice research has revealed that BBP is widely used and DEHP is still in use. 

Pharos users can learn more about the many toxicological impacts of these six chemicals by exploring them in our Chemicals and Materials Library.  The banned chemicals include:
HBCD & HBCDD (hexabromocyclododecane) 
MDA (4,4'-diaminodiphenylmethane)
DEHP  (bis(2-ethylexyl) phthalate)
BBP (benzyl butyl phthalate)
DBP (dibutyl phthalate)
Musk xylene (5-ter-butyl-2,4,6-trinito-m-xylene) 

Pharos users will find products that contain these chemicals or any other substance by clicking on the red button labeled “Show products that contain this material” in the upper right hand corner of the chemical description page. 

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2030 CHALLENGE FOR PRODUCTS: MAKING IT SAFE FOR THE CLIMATE AND HUMAN HEALTH

 

Architecture 2030 issued a clarion call today to manufacturers to make dramatic reductions in the carbon footprint of their building products. Paralleling their ambitious 2006 Challenge for carbon neutrality in building energy, the 2030 Challenge for Products calls for the architecture and building committee to work together to specify, design, and manufacture products with carbon equivalent footprint that are 30% below product category averages with progressively tougher targets every five years reaching 50% by 2030.

The industry has its work cut out for it. Consistent guidelines for carbon calculations do not yet exist. Product Category Rules (PCRs) need to be developed for each product category to guide the life cycle assessments of embodied carbon and insure that the comparisons between products and industry averages are valid. If industry can rise to that challenge, the resulting carbon footprint information on products could provide a useful powerful tool for the A&D community to use to select lower climate impact products and spur improvement across the industry. Our challenge is to encourage those improvements and make sure they don't come through the use of toxic materials at the cost of human health.

The GreenSpecPharos team will follow the development of tools to meet the Challenge and bring you critical assessments of the process as it unfolds. As reliable carbon footprint metrics begin to emerge in 2012, we will assess and score them side by side with the toxicity and renewable content information we already bring you in Pharos to provide you with tools to help you specify healthy materials for your buildings while transforming the building industry to product production that is safe for the climate and for human health.

Check out the Environmental Building News for more assessment of the Challenge

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ENVIRO CLOSE-UP: KARL GROSSMAN INTERVIEWS LARRY KILROY OF THE HEALTHY BUILDING NETWORK

 

Who's behind this Pharos Project, anyway? If you've ever wondered about the Healthy Building Network, about our history, our values, our campaigns, and why we created Pharos, check out this video.  Enviro Close-Up with Karl Grossman is a 30-minute TV series featured on Free Speech TV, and this week the featured interview is with HBN's Larry Kilroy.  You can view it online or see it aired live this weekend (see EnviroVideo's website for showtimes and channels).

Note: In the interview, it is mentioned that the LEED Rating System does not address health considerations.  This footage was taken before the introduction of LEED Pilot Credit 11 for Chemical Avoidance in Building Materials, and before the passage of LEED for Healthcare.

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ASID FOUNDATION NAMES HEALTHY BUILDING NETWORK WINNER OF $100,000 RESEARCH GRANT

 

via officenewswire, 1/27/11

The American Society of Interior Designers Foundation (ASID Foundation) has awarded $100,000 to the Materials Research Collaborative, a two-year project of the Healthy Building Network (HBN). The Foundation received proposals from more than 60 interior designers, scientists and educators for projects focusing on how interior design improves human behavior.

A central element of the partnership between HBN and BuildingGreen, The Materials Research Collaborative operates with the purpose of enabling the interior design community to more proactively participate in reducing the use of building products that are hazardous to human health while stimulating market demand for healthier building products. Chemicals released from interior finish products into the built environment can have profound impacts on human behavior, ranging from reduced comfort and productivity for building occupants, to long-term genetic damage that can affect future generations. This project will provide interior designers with an improved level of independently-verified information that can be applied to avoid using these materials. This information will be presented for use via the Pharos online database and analysis system, a project of HBN that has established itself as the industry leader in transparent access to chemical and material properties of building products.

About Healthy Building Network: The Healthy Building Network is deeply committed to the goal of achieving environmental justice. We employ comprehensive lifecycle thinking when evaluating green building materials. Since 2000, our projects have directly resulted in the introduction of new, healthier building materials into commercial markets, shifting over $4 billion in materials purchases from toxic materials to healthier alternatives that are comparable in both price and performance to the materials they have replaced. We have played a key role in establishing precedent-setting green building guidelines for health care facilities, demonstrating well-built, healthy and green modular homes to the affordable housing market in the Gulf States region and developing the first, on-line evaluation tool for building materials.
http://www.healthybuilding.net/

About ASID Foundation: As the leading interior design organization, ASID is dedicated to progressing the profession of interior design. The ASID Foundation supports endeavors that capture and disseminate knowledge, encourage innovation, and benefit the health safety, and welfare of the public through interior design research, scholarships and education. ASID Foundation initiatives include CIDA’s Accreditation Process Review, REGREEN, a collaborative project with the U.S. Green Building Council, and Rebuilding Together and their Veteran’s Housing Initiative, which rehabilitates the homes of low-income active and retired members of the military. Learn more at www.asidfoundation.org

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NEW LEED PILOT CREDITS ADVANCE WHILE CHEMICAL DATA GAP LOOMS

 

Last year the USGBC introduced two new Pilot Credits[1] that reward precautionary action, the avoidance of certain classes of chemicals in the face of mounting evidence that they present significant threats to human health.[2] Industry trade groups fought these measures as they fight all chemical regulation, with the argument restrictions or disincentives against chemical use must be based upon "sound science" that proves the connection between a specific chemical and a specific health problem beyond a shadow of a doubt. But due to a catch-22 in current US law, the EPA must prove potential risk or widespread exposure before it can get the data it needs to determine the extent of hazard, exposure or risk.[3] If we want to make green buildings healthy buildings, merely following the law will lead us in circles.

To fully appreciate the importance of precautionary measures such as the LEED Pilot Credits, consider the failure of the chemical industry's voluntary effort to provide EPA with information about High Production Volume (HPV) chemicals - chemicals produced or imported into the US at volumes in excess of 1 million pounds per year. In the early 1980s, the National Academy of Sciences' National Research Council found that 78% of the chemicals in highest-volume commercial use had not had even "minimal" toxicity testing.[4] Thirteen years later, a comprehensive report by the Environmental Defense Fund (EDF) found no significant improvement: "even the most basic toxicity testing results cannot be found in the public record for nearly 75% of the top-volume chemicals in commercial use."[5]

In 1998, multiple studies by federal government agencies confirmed that the government lacked basic data needed to understand and characterize the potential hazards associated with HPV chemicals.[6] There are roughly 3,000 such chemicals. "Most Americans would assume that basic toxicity testing is available and that all chemicals in commerce today are safe... This is not a prudent assumption," said one review.[7] An EPA review could find no safety information for more than half of them, and complete data for only 7 percent. Additionally, EDF reported, there are tens of thousands of non-HPV chemicals that remain to be addressed, which likely have even larger data gaps than were found for HPV chemicals.[8]

These findings prompted the EPA to swing into action - voluntary action. The High Production Volume Chemical Challenge of 1998 invited American industries to "sponsor" HPV chemicals and voluntarily provide health and safety data in lieu of regulatory action. More than 2,200 chemicals were eventually "sponsored," but ten years later, in 2008, the EPA still had no data on more than half of them. Of the data sets it had received from industry, fewer than half were complete, according to EDF, an original sponsor of the program.

On January 5, 2011, the EPA finally took regulatory action. It will require testing of just "19 of the many hundreds of HPV chemicals on the market today for which even the most basic, 'screening level' hazard data are not publicly available."[9]

The Dow Chemical Company calls the program "a tremendous success."[10] An investigative report by the Milwaukee Journal deemed it "a failure."[11] Richard Denison, Senior Scientist at EDF and one of the most knowledgeable independent experts on the program calls it "a perfect poster child for what's wrong" with federal chemical regulations.[12]

Efforts to reform the major US law regulating chemical production, the Toxic Substances Control Act, are underway but are unlikely to make it through the Republican controlled House of Representatives. In the meantime, despite the data gaps, it is possible to make responsible, healthier choices based upon the best available evidence. The new LEED Pilot Credits help you make those choices and remove tons of toxic chemicals from our buildings, our bodies and our environment. Take your first step toward earning these credits with LEEDuser, and easily find products that qualify for the credits using the Pharos online system.

Footnotes

[1] Combined, Credits 2 and 11 in the USGBC’s new Pilot Library reward the avoidance of persistent bioaccumulative toxins, halogenated organic compounds, phthalates and halogenated flame retardants.

[2] The 1998 Wingspread Statement on the Precautionary Principle summarizes the principle this way: "When an activity raises threats of harm to the environment or human health, precautionary measures should be taken even if some cause and effect relationships are not fully established scientifically." The US Green Building Council Guiding Principle #4 states: The USGBC will be guided by the precautionary principle in utilizing technical and scientific data to protect, preserve and restore the health of the global environment, ecosystems.

[3] Richard Denison, Environmental Defense Fund. "A Near Sisyphusian Task; EPA Soldiers On to Require More Testing Under TSCA." 1/5/11. http://blogs.edf.org/nanotechnology/2011/01/05/a-near-sisyphusian-task-epa-soldiers-on-to-require-more-testing-under-tsca/

[4] Environmental Defense Fund. "Toxic Ignorance: The Continuing Absence of Basic Health Testing for Top-Selling Chemicals in the United States." 1997, p.11. http://www.edf.org/documents/243_toxicignorance.pdf

[5] Environmental Defense Fund. "Toxic Ignorance: The Continuing Absence of Basic Health Testing for Top-Selling Chemicals in the United States." 1997, p.7. http://www.edf.org/documents/243_toxicignorance.pdf

[6] Meg Kissinger and Susanne Rust. "EPA fails to collect chemical safety data." JS Online. 8/4/08. http://www.jsonline.com/news/milwaukee/32597744.html.

[7] Meg Kissinger and Susanne Rust. "EPA fails to collect chemical safety data." JS Online. 8/4/08. http://www.jsonline.com/news/milwaukee/32597744.html.

[8] Environmental Defense Fund. "High Hopes, Low Marks: A Final Report Card on the High Production Volume Chemical Challenge." p.30. 2007. http://www.edf.org/documents/6653_HighHopesLowMarks.pdf

[9] Denison, op. cit., Note that EPA has initiated another rulemaking targeting another 29 chemicals.

[10] Dow. “Product Safety.” http://www.dow.com/productsafety/chemical/epa_hpv.htm

[11] Meg Kissinger and Susanne Rust. "EPA fails to collect chemical safety data." JS Online. 8/4/08. http://www.jsonline.com/news/milwaukee/32597744.html.

[12] Denison, op. cit. 

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IS PHAROS THE WIKILEAKS FOR BUILDING MATERIALS?

 

The word of the year 2010 is transparency.   Credit its prominence to the modern James Bondian figure Julian Assange and his WikiLeaks divulgence of state secrets.  But WikiLeaks’ efforts have done as much to cloud the debate over transparency as they have to shed light on matters that impact our daily lives. 

What the Pharos Project shares with WikiLeaks is being a transformative platform for transparency.  But we do not use shadowy tactics to achieve this goal. We do not play geopolitical games. We’re encouraging voluntary disclosure by manufacturers, and we’re empowering consumers to make informed choices. 

There are important distinctions between types of transparency,  data collection tactics, and information dissemination.  There are state secrets, and then there are marketplace secrets.  There are data dumps, and then there are contextualized fact-based evaluations.  

There is now a healthy debate about the role full transparency has in global affairs -- does it encumber authoritarianism (as Assange argues) or engender anarchy?  It is hard to judge where the release of state secrets falls -- does it hurt or help people to satisfy basic human needs, and protect human rights?  It shakes up the status quo, but what is end game of this chaos strategy?

In the marketplace, the role of transparency is clear.  As consumers who want a healthier planet, we have the power to demand to know what we are buying.  We are in a position of strength, though some corporations try to flip the equation through black-box certifications and greenwash. 

The Pharos Project has had some positive results in obtaining fully transparent information from manufacturers.  Many companies are clearly committed. Others are much more reluctant to say even where their products are made.    If we (and you) want to know, it is our choice to buy only from companies that are transparent.

In Pharos, when manufacturers refrain from disclosing, we are still able to fill the information gap by finding publicly available documents. We don't hack -- even though companies are often surprised by how much we can figure out without their participation.  Shipping records, industry process flow charts, toxicological studies, and patent information are already out there in the data universe. 

Competitors pretty much know what's in each other’s products and how their supply chains work.  We endeavor to make sure Pharos users do too. The Pharos research team gathers this information and provides it in usable form through our product evaluations.   Rather than dumping conflicting, confusing, raw, and unsourced data, we collect, synthesize, and display this information into a macro-level view, the product profile, from which users can drill as deeply as they choose. 

And our system identifies, through the choices made by companies to participate or not, those manufacturers that respect our users’ collective demand for full disclosure.

So, no, we are not the WikiLeaks of green building. Pharos is the future of materials evaluation.  Marketplace transparency is a core value on the path to sustainability.
 

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BUILDINGGREEN / HEALTHY BUILDING NETWORK ANNOUNCE STRATEGIC PARTNERSHIP

 
Today at the Greenbuild International Conference and Expo in Chicago, the Healthy Building Network and BuildingGreen announced a strategic partnership that will provide architects, designers and specifiers with an unsurpassed source of trusted, authoritative, independent information about building products. Effective immediately, the two organizations will link our web-based green building research sites, GreenSpec and the Pharos Project, creating unprecedented ease of use between the two tools, and push-button access to the combined product research of the two organizations. In addition to the new product offerings, we will also be establishing a new research collaborative that will focus its work on accelerating the pace of independent research on product toxicity. A new website, www.GreenSpecPharos.com, provides immediate access to GreenSpec and Pharos from one location.

Our partnership with BuildingGreen is an exciting advance in HBN's mission of accelerating the market transformation to healthier, more sustainable and more equitable building products. It will enable us to increase the scope and scale of our research, to provide unsurpassed transparency about building material choices, and dramatically enhance our ability to communicate these results to a much broader public. Architects, designers, engineers and others will benefit from having access to an independent source of comprehensive and reliable information in an affordable, flexible tool for specifying green building products.

"Feedback from the community has clearly indicated that there is an information gap we can fill by joining forces with HBN," stated Nadav Malin, president of BuildingGreen. "Through our products - Environmental Building News, GreenSpec and LEEDuser - BuildingGreen has been a trusted source, on the leading edge of green product innovation for 20 years. HBN's Pharos Project adds a new level of in-depth exploration of the healthfulness and other aspects of these products. Our customers have asked to see these capabilities in one place, and we believe this strategic partnership is the best response to their needs."

Alex Wilson, founder of BuildingGreen, remarked, "From the beginning 20 years ago, we understood that our commitment to establishing and maintaining our independence from paid advertising and manufacturing sponsorships would be a financially challenging path. The community has rewarded us with their trust. HBN has been on this same journey. Together, we are committed to ensuring that there is a strong, independent resource for specifying green building products - today, tomorrow and for the future. This will be even more important as the number of green products and environmental claims continue to grow exponentially."

Greenbuild attendees can stop by and celebrate our new partnership at the HBN booth (#1022) and the Building Green booth (#512). Bill Walsh will join Nadav Malin at the BuildingGreen booth on Wednesday from 12:30 to 1:30, and Thursday from 11:00 to 12:00. Nadav Malin will join Bill Walsh at the HBN booth Wednesday from 3:00 to 4:00 and Thursday from 11:00 to 12:00.

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MEETING THE NEW LEED PILOT LIBRARY CHEMICAL AVOIDANCE CREDIT

 

The USGBC’s new “Pilot Credit 11: Chemical Avoidance in Building Materials” is an important step forward for the LEED program in addressing human health and leading chemicals of concern. This new addition to the LEED Pilot Library basically requires project teams to do two things:

1) Product selection: specify interior finish materials that do not contain phthalates and halogenated flame retardants (HFRs).
2) Evaluation: Compare six high coverage area examples of those specified materials against an industry norm or firm standard spec material, with a focus on human heath impacts. Include evaluation of meeting EQ credit 4.

As with all Pilot Credits, the project receives an innovation point based upon making a good faith effort to fulfill the requirements and actively participating in the Pilot process, regardless of actual success at attaining the full requirements.

You can use Pharos now to help you with both product selection and evaluation of your sample products. The phthalate and HFR filters currently available in Pharos are aligned with the credit language. Select a product category from the building product library. Then on the right hand side under “Return products known not to contain or be treated with:” check off the both the “LEED Pilot Credit 11 Chemicals” filter and click on “Apply Filters.”

The search results will display all of the products that are fully disclosed and do not have any phthalates or HFRs in their listed contents. The top of the page will also indicate how many products did not meet the screen because of known phthalate or HFR content, how many did not meet the screen due to unknown content and links to view those products. If you find products in either of those categories that you would like to specify, we encourage you to contact the manufacturer or your rep to push them to reformulate in the former case, or disclose to Pharos in the latter.

Use the 10 point Pharos scoring results to compare your selected products to other products in the category for the Pilot program evaluation needs as well.

Have a LEED project on the boards now? Register your project for this credit in the LEED Pilot Credit Library and participate in the discussions in BuildingGreen's LEEDuser to learn more and share lessons. This is an important opportunity to help shape the future of healthy buildings while getting innovation credit points just for trying.

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p.s. Going to GreenBuild? You can learn more about why halogenated flame retardants are targeted at Dr. Arlene Blum’s Master Speaker talk on Nov 18 at 8:30. Missing her talk? Read the interview with Arlene Blum about HFRs in the HBN Newsletter.

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JOIN US AT GREENBUILD 2010

 

The Pharos Project invites you to visit our booth at the U.S. Green Building Council's annual Greenbuild Expo, the world's largest expo devoted to green building.

Where: McCormick Place West
2301 S. Lake Shore Drive
Chicago, IL 60616

Date and Time: Wednesday, Nov. 17, 2010 from 9 a.m. to 7 p.m.
Thursday, Nov. 18, 2010 from 9 a.m. to 6 p.m.

Booth number: 1022

To Register: Visit the Greenbuild website. The Pharos Project also has a limited number of free expo-only passes available on a first-come, first-served basis. If you are interested, please contact Sarah Gilberg at sgilberg@healthybuilding.net.

We look forward to seeing you at Greenbuild 2010!

Follow us on Twitter (@HBNPharos) - We'll be tweeting updates throughout the event! 

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OOH, THAT SMELL

 

While researching fabrics, I recently stumbled upon a disturbing new development: companies are integrating scents into fibers, to “enhance consumer experiences.”

This hits me on a personal level:  I am quite sensitive to many perfumes.  While I can control my own home and office environment, these fragrances make travel kind of hazardous.  Air fresheners in conference centers and hotel rooms attack with no notice.  They blow out streams of scent that send me out the room, gasping for air.

Now some in the fabric industry are building these fragrances into clothing and even carpets.   A 2005 industry research document that kick-started this trend asserts, “The powerful influence of scent has been shown in consumer settings as well, as the presence of scents can influence shopping behavior and buying decisions.”

A company called Scenterprises has capitalized on what Advertising Age called one of the top ten trends of this decade.  “By ‘scent-branding’ various properties such as hotels, casinos, spas, resorts and retail stores, it is possible to not only enhance the environment, but also to create an impactful ambient scent experience,” boasts the company’s website.

I can attest that yes, this is an “impactful ambient scent experience.”  Thanks to this trend, I fear walking into some meeting, sitting down next to someone wearing grape-scented pants, or above a carpet that smells like an orange, and then feeling that too familiar tightening of the airway. 

I realize this is just an acute hazard, as far as we know. These additives present short-term discomfort, but there are plenty of other ingredients that cause more serious, long-term impacts, on us and our environment – phthalates, perfluorocarbons, formaldehyde, nonylphenol, naphthalene, and so on.

But this trend reinforces the prime imperative of The Pharos Project:  full disclosure.  Material Safety Data Sheets, if they exist at all, tend to define only those ingredients that represent over one percent of a product’s content.  These fragrances are embodied in fibers under this threshold. 

Our planet is overcrowded with unneeded products that contain unnecessary ingredients, all designed to encourage consumers to separate dollars from their wallets. 

As consumers, it is imperative to continue pressing manufacturers to tell all, everything, and let us decide whether we want or need to expose ourselves, or our guests, to these threats.  I don’t buy industry’s constant refrain, that their ingredients are proprietary. Competitors know what’s in their products, and we deserve to, too. 

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LOW VOC PAINTS MAY STILL CAUSE ASTHMA & ALLERGIES

 

Fumes from chemicals commonly used in water-based paints and solvents may be associated with substantially higher rates of asthma, stuffy noses and eczema. The Swedish/US joint study reported in Environmental Health News this week found that children sleeping in rooms with higher concentrations of propylene glycol and glycol ether compounds (PGEs) in the air were two to four times more likely to suffer symptoms.

Ironically, PGEs have been used more widely in cleaners and paints as manufacturers have sought to lower their VOCs (volatile organic compounds). PGEs are VOCs, but they emit at lower levels than the older, highly toxic oil solvent-based compounds. Pharos now identifies PGE compounds when they appear in paints and other products with links to this information and will watch the science for further information on the connections between asthma and chemicals in building products.

Given the lack of full disclosure of material contents in most paints and the still evolving science on other contributors to asthma, the most protective path is to choose paints with no VOCs. Paints that score 7 or higher in the Pharos VOC category have at least a manufacturer declaration that there are no VOCs (PGEs included) in the formula, including so-called “exempt VOCs.” And don’t forget the tints. Specify VOC free tints to make sure the PGEs and other VOCs that you kept out of the paint don’t sneak back in through the colorant.
 

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FIRST PRODUCTS PASS NEW STRICTER VOC STANDARD FOR HOMES

 

Scientific Certification Systems (SCS) has released their first Indoor Advantage Gold certifications for products meeting the new, tougher residential criteria under Version 1.1 of the 01350 specification (see the new certificate here). The State of California made several revisions to the 01350 standard early this year including:
1) Tightening the formaldehyde standard to meet new California state guidelines and
2) Establishing a residential scenario that accounts for the lower air change rates in houses that can lead to dramatically higher concentrations of toxicants off-gassing from building materials.
These changes are critical to making the 01350 standard truly health protective in homes and we’ve incorporated them in the Pharos VOC scoring protocols (see previous blog on the new 01350 standard).

Johns Manville’s formaldehyde-free fiberglass batt and blown-in insulation products are the first building products certified to meet these key new criteria.  As a result of these certifications, the JM products are the first products in Pharos to attain a score of 9 in the Volatile Organic Compounds (VOC) category and a score of 7 in User Toxics (UseTox).

SCS is the first, and so far only, certifier to fully implement the new health-protective Version 1.1 standards.  GreenGuard, Floorscore, GreenLabel Plus and other programs have not yet implemented either the formaldehyde or residential revision, citing controversy in the industry over the residential standard.  We note, however, that while the industry suggests that the new state residential standard is too strict, others analysts think they did not go far enough. The one thing there is widespread agreement on is that the school and office 01350 scenarios are not protective for homes and a stricter standard is needed.  Therefore, while the debate proceeds to fine tune the standard, we recommend all certifiers take a precautionary stance and utilize the Version 1.1 standard. Builders, designers and specifiers can protect their clients and play an important role in moving the industry by asking their product suppliers to certify their products meet the new standard.
 

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BUYER BEWARE: CHEMICALS OF CONCERN FOUND IN FLOORING & WALLCOVERINGS

 

Heavy metals and other toxic chemicals are still widespread in some types of interior finishes according to a major study of home improvement products released today. Researchers from www.HealthyStuff.org tested a wide range of national and local brand flooring and wallpaper products and discovered lead, phthalates, brominated flame retardants and a range of other chemicals linked with human health problems ranging from asthma and liver damage to reproductive problems, birth defects and autism.

The nonprofit Ecology Center of Ann Arbor Michigan initiated the HealthyStuff project in 2009 to bring attention to toxic chemical content in toys and now is turning its attention to home improvement products. HealthyStuff.org staff tested over 100 product brands, covering about 2300 wall covering products and another 1000 flooring products, including bamboo, cork, carpet cushion, sheet, tile, and wood floorings. Researchers used an XRF device that uses X-ray fluorescence to detect heavy metals and other elements, including lead, bromine, chlorine, cadmium, arsenic, tin and mercury. In a separate lab process they also tested a much smaller sample of four vinyl flooring products for phthalates.  All test results are published on the www.HealthyStuff.org website searchable by product type or brand.

Phthalates were present in all of the vinyl flooring samples at levels ranging from less than 1% up to almost 13% of weight. Study results revealed mixtures of four different phthalates (DEHP, BBP, DnOP and DINP) all of which were recently banned in children’s toys and are ranked by the EPA as significant chemicals of concern. A significant body of science has shown associations between phthalates in building materials, levels in humans and health impacts ranging from asthma to birth defects.

Some of the other hazardous elements found included lead - detected in much of the ceramic tile tested and in much smaller, but still significant, percentage of the vinyl flooring and vinyl wallcovering (about 2% of each). Tin indicated likely presence of organotin stabilizers in two thirds of the PVC flooring. Some organotins are endocrine disruptors which can affect development.

It should be noted that the XRF testing used in this study only indicates the presence of tin and does not discriminate which type of tin compound it is a part of. The XRF assessment also only indicates presence of the elements and does not indicate how bioavailable the compound it is in may be; for example, it does not indicate if the lead is well bound into the tile glazes or is likely to leach or flake out. 

The news wasn’t all dismal. Linoleum, cork, bamboo and hardwood all tested free of lead, cadmium, mercury and other hazardous metals and at only very low trace levels of some of the other chemicals (very minute levels of arsenic or bromine were found in a majority of all flooring materials samples other than tile). Note that some cork flooring uses PVC which may contain phthalates.  One cork floor sample in the HealthyStuff study tested at 17% chlorine likely reflecting PVC and phthalate content but has not yet been tested for specific phthalates.

So what conclusions can be drawn from this report, particularly if you don’t happen to own an XRF gun (they go for about $15K these days) and can’t test every product you consider specifying? The most significant problem area revealed by this study is in products made from vinyl (PVC). Over one half of the vinyl wallpapers contained one or more hazardous elements at significant levels (>40ppm) and significant quantities of lead, cadmium, tin and antimony were found in a large number of vinyl floorings. Ceramic tile also clearly needs to be studied to understand the potential lead problem this study uncovered. In the meantime, demand disclosure of all contents from manufacturers, including the trace elements and avoid the vinyl. 
 

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PHAROS APPLAUDS AND SUPPORTS FIRST LIVING BUILDING CHALLENGE CERTIFIED PROJECTS

 

Congratulations to the first three projects to meet the Living Building Challenge℠ design standard for healthy sustainable buildings! This is an impressive accomplishment, coming less than four years after the Cascadia Green Building Council launched this ambitious high-bar standard, which requires not only excellent “beyond LEED” design, but a year of occupancy to prove that the operation of the building also meets the Challenge standards.

Washington University’s Tyson Living Learning Center (Eureka, MO) and the Omega Center for Sustainable Living (Rhinebeck, NY), earned 'Living' status and  Eco-Sense, (a private residence in Victoria, BC), earned partial program certification, or ‘Petal Recognition,’ for achieving four of the six stringent ‘Petals’ which represent the categories of impact that the Challenge addresses.

The Challenge material requirements are demanding, mandating avoidance of a tough list of toxic chemical contents including, PVC and other chlorinated plastics, CFCs and HCFCs, formaldehyde, halogenated flame retardants, pesticides and several heavy metals and toxic wood treatments. This has sparked some ambitious and creative efforts to source environmentally safer and healthier materials well beyond what most green buildings accomplish currently. The Tyson project was the first building taking the  Challenge to successfully eliminate PVC from the building’s electrical wiring and all other systems - along with all the other Red List Chemicals. The Omega Center project went so far as to make their own pipe insulation when they could not find products free of Red List materials.

HBN has been a long-time supporter of the Living Building Challenge, consulting on the development of the chemical policy for materials and now providing a Living Building Challenge Red List Materials filter in Pharos  to help Challenge design teams find materials that don’t contain the targeted chemicals of concern. We are delighted to see project teams proving that the aspiration to build buildings that are healthy and environmentally-restorative can be realized today.
 

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HEINZ AWARDS HONOR SCIENTISTS OPPOSED BY CHEMICAL INDUSTRY

 

The assault by the petro-chemical industry on scientific integrity – and scientists with integrity – has been well documented.[1] This year, three winners of the 16th Annual Heinz Awards are scientists who are distinguished "by their courageous willingness to communicate the implications of their work, often in the face of determined opposition" from the chemical industry. The three have led efforts to reduce the use and emissions of endocrine-disrupting chemicals, such as dioxin and phthalates, associated with PVC plastic, and BPA (bisphenol A) used in epoxy-based building products and as a liner in food and beverage cans.[2]

Professor Terry Collins of Carnegie Mellon University encountered industry opposition at Greenbuild 2006 while speaking before a capacity crowd on a panel of Green Chemistry experts. There, as he routinely does in his writings and presentations, Collins took aim at chlorine-based chemistry such as PVC plastic, as an "inescapable source" of persistent, bioaccumulative toxic pollution. As early as 2001, Collins had publicly criticized companies that "have sought to protect their profits by distorting scientific data to make dioxins appear to be less harmful to humans than they actually are," and argued that "it is critical that chemistry that is not really green does not get sold as such, and that the public is not misled with false or insufficient safety information."[3] Similar remarks at Greenbuild earned him more than a few challenges from the floor, and uncharacteristically negative reviews charging "bias" in the official audience feedback provided to all speakers.

Professor Frederick vom Saal at the University of Missouri has been researching endocrine disruptors, also known as hormone-disrupting chemicals, since 1991, looking particularly at the widely-used BPA (bisphenol A) since 1995. Dr. vom Saal has pioneered remarkable advances in our understanding of how hormone-disrupting chemicals impact human health. His research has demonstrated that hormone-disrupting chemicals can have greater biological impacts at lower doses than at higher doses of exposure, and that while laboratory instruments could not detect the presence of the BPA in food that had been stored in containers made with the chemical, animals that ate the food exhibited a "big effect" from the exposure.[4]

In 1997, his research earned him a visit from an official of the Chemical Manufacturers Association, who suggested that millions of dollars of research funds might be made available to him but asked, "Can we arrive at a mutually beneficial outcome where you withhold publishing this paper until authorized to do so by the Chemical Manufacturers Association?"[5] When vom Saal refused, he found himself the target of persistent professional attacks from the chemical industry.[6]

Dr. Lynn Goldman, a pediatrician and epidemiologist recently named dean of the School of Public Health and Health Services at George Washington University, served as the Environmental Protection Agency's assistant administrator for the Office of Chemical Safety and Pollution Prevention (formerly the Office of Prevention, Pesticides and Toxic Substances) from 1993-98. In 1994, her office published the first Dioxin Reassessment,[7] which provoked the Chlorine Chemistry Council to increase its budget six-fold to $12 million, in order to mount a multi-year lobbying and public relations campaign to overturn the findings.[8] Under Goldman's direction the EPA also expanded its work on endocrine-disrupting chemicals in response to the work of vom Saal and others[9] despite massive chemical industry opposition.[10]

Endocrine-disrupting chemicals are ubiquitous in green buildings not for lack of alternatives, but for lack of resolve in the face of chemical industry greenwash and threats. Recognition of Collins, vom Saal and Goldman by Heinz should help the green building community realize that in order to get toxic chemicals out of green building, it will take "courageous willingness to communicate the implications of their work, often in the face of determined opposition."

Footnotes

[1] See, for example: http://www.healthybuilding.net/news/080507read-this-book.html; www.defendingscience.org; www.cspinet.org; http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/328/5979/689

[2] The 16th Annual Heinz Award also recognized 7 other environmental leaders in other fields. For a complete list, see, http://www.heinzawards.net/recipients/

[3] A transcript of the 2006 Greenbuild session is not available. For an example of Dr. Collins presentations on persistent, bioaccumulative toxins and chlorine-based chemistry, and to see these quotes in context, see, Essays on Science and Society: Toward Sustainable Chemistry, Science 5 January 2001: Vol. 291. http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/291/5501/48

[4] Dr. vom Saal explained these findings in an interview with the PBS television series Frontline. See, http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/nature/interviews/vomsaal.html

[5] See, Pflaum, Nadia. Missouri biologist Frederick vom Saal and his team exposed the dangers of bisphenol A — and earned the wrath of the plastic industry, p.2, The Pitch, April 24, 2008. http://www.pitch.com/2008-04-24/news/ever-since-university-of-missouri-biologist-frederick-vom-saal-and-his-team-learned-the-dangers-of-bisphenol-a-and-plastic-the-chemical-industry-has-been-trying-to-discredit-them/2/

[6] See, http://www.ewg.org/node/27129

[7] The Dioxin Reassessment was initiated after the chemical industry objected to EPA's 1984 designation of dioxin as one of the most potent carcinogens yet identified. Industry appealed the 1994 Reassessment, leading to publication of a second reassessment in 2000. The Dioxin Reassessment still has not been completed. For a summary of the 20 year history of delay see, http://www.chej.org/documents/2010/Dioxin%20Key%20Letters/Dioxin%20Timeline.pdf.

[8] See, | Roni A. Neff, ScM, and Lynn R. Goldman, MD, MPH, Regulatory Parallels to Daubert : Stakeholder Influence, “Sound Science,” and the Delayed Adoption of Health-Protective Standards, Supplement 1, 2005, Vol 95, No. S1 | American Journal of Public Health http://www.defendingscience.org/upload/Neff-Goldman.pdf

[9] http://www.epa.gov/oppt/library/pubs/archive/oppts_speeches/malerepf.htm

[10] See, http://www.ewg.org/node/27129 

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FLY ASH IN BUILDING PRODUCTS: PROCEED WITH PRECAUTION

 

On September 1, 2010, Environmental Building News (EBN) announced it would "no longer consider the use of fly ash in products or materials to be an environmental attribute when doing so does not offset greenhouse gas emissions." EBN continues to support the use fly ash as a substitute for portland cement in concrete. In his editorial explaining the EBN position, Executive Director Alex Wilson also called for transparency and disclosure standards that allow purchasers to know the "hazard concentration grade" of toxic materials such as mercury that are frequently found in fly ash. The Green Guide for Health Care, the California Collaborative on High Performance Schools and the draft LEED for Health Care also set strict limits on mercury levels in fly ash in all applications, including those which offset greenhouse gases, such as cement.

The EBN position is the latest significant rebuke to regulations recently proposed by the EPA that aggressively promote unregulated recycling, or "beneficial use," of fly ash and other waste products from coal-burning power plants. These have been challenged by Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER) for lacking "demonstrated scientific support for the safety or quantifiable benefits of using coal combustion wastes in building and consumer products."[1] One major concern is that as air pollution control technology gets better, larger concentrations of contaminants such as heavy metals are "scrubbed" from the gases and concentrated in various waste streams: fly ash, bottom ash, or materials from the stack known as "flue gas desulfurization residuals." Each waste stream has its own issues. These will vary depending upon the composition of the coal, although heavy metals like lead, arsenic and mercury are common concerns with all.

One of the big problems with EPA's vigorous support for recycling coal combustion waste is that it contradicts the Agency's 2006 Roadmap for Mercury, the national long-term strategy for reducing ubiquitous mercury contamination of our environment, food chain and bodies. In that plan, EPA invites companies to "voluntarily commit to mercury product use reduction and phaseout goals and ... to establish inventories of mercury; remove mercury and mercury-containing equipment from their plants; and institute purchasing policies to reduce mercury use."

Promoters of fly ash and other coal combustion wastes as "recycled content" cite early studies that have not detected mercury leaching from concrete products made with fly ash. But according to the EPA: "When mercury is used in a product, most releases occur during manufacturing or disposal."[2] Indeed, elevated mercury releases have been documented in wallboard manufacturing plants that use coal combustion wastes, and in December 2009, the State of New York revoked a 20-year-old "beneficial use" designation for fly ash used at a cement kiln due to elevated mercury levels in nearby soil and wildlife. No testing has yet been done to assess the potential mercury exposure to workers in those facilities, or in jobs that involve grinding or jackhammering concrete, or crushing it for recycling at end of life.

The air pollution laws that mandate the "scrubbing" of toxic pollutants out of coal combustion gasses are one of the great successes of the Clean Air Act, an example of how to properly allocate pollution costs that were once externalized. No studies have been done to determine whether widespread dispersal of mercury and other heavy metals into building products could undermine this formula and transform concentrated regulated "point sources" of mercury and other heavy metals into countless "non-point sources" that are impossible to control over the long term.

Another big problem is that the "coal ash reuse industry" has aligned itself with the coal industry, opposing efforts by environmental groups like the Sierra Club, Earth Justice, Southern Environmental Law Center and PEER to strictly regulate coal combustion wastes and reduce carbon emissions. The long-term cost of storing and managing contaminated coal ash provides an economic incentive for utilities and their customers to use coal-generated power more efficiently and to switch to renewable energy sources. No studies have been conducted to determine whether the unregulated recycling of coal combustion wastes might inhibit efforts to reduce overall carbon emissions to the atmosphere from coal-burning power plants.

Before taking a neurotoxic waste material such as mercury out of a successful pollution control program and redistributing it into our homes, schools and job sites, we should take reasonable precautions. Among these would be fairly simple tests to ensure that mercury and other heavy metals do not escape during manufacturing, construction, recycling or disposal of products made from coal combustion wastes; regulations limiting the range of toxic materials in the material, and transparent monitoring and disclosure of those contents.

In its proposed rule, EPA emphasizes repeatedly that it does not wish to "stigmatize" fly ash by designating it as a hazardous waste. The greater concern is this: that by following the lead of the coal industry rather than taking the time to do due diligence, EPA - and the coal ash reuse industry - are leaving the green building industry vulnerable to the stigma of potentially widespread heavy metal contamination in recycled products.

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PHAROS HELPS EPA WITH INSULATION STUDY

 

Pharos is partnering with the EPA to insure that the insulation used in federal stimulus funded home weatherization programs is healthy and low in environmental impact. In a special project with EPA Region 9 and StopWaste, Pharos is surveying cellulose, fiberglass and cotton products to understand the current state of the industry on a variety of key parameters set by the EPA, including recycled content, indoor air quality, including application of the new residential emissions standards, and toxic content. Manufacturers interested in participating in the program are submitting information to Pharos which the EPA will use to evaluate products and modify standards.

Recent improvements in products are starting to show up in Pharos listings. For example, UltraTouch cotton insulation has switched its 85% recycled content from post industrial to entirely post-consumer recycled cotton, doubling its renewable material score. Watch for more news of the evolving state of blanket insulation as this project progresses. 

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PHAROS CUTS THROUGH ENDANGERED WOOD CONFUSION

 

Use of biobased materials whether from agricultural plants or from trees is appealing in green building due to their renewable nature.  However, overharvesting, plantation farming, chemical use and other problems threaten many species of trees with extinction as well as threatening entire forest habitats and the animals and humans that depend upon them.

In order to help green building professionals avoid inadvertently using endangered species in green building projects, the Pharos team has just added a section to the Pharos Chemical and Material Library (CML) that deals specifically with trees and other biobased materials. The CML now includes over 800 entries for tree species or groups of species with reference to any applicable warnings of threats to their survival or their habitats. Species warnings indicate the Pharos system's prioritization of concern based upon the degree of the threat to the species.  One of the most widely accepted criteria sets for rating the threat to endangered species is the Red List Categories and Criteria prepared by the Species Survival Commission of the IUCN (International Union for Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources).  Pharos structures its prioritization of the relative significance of threats based upon the IUCN categories.

Warnings are categorized using a colored-flag system, similar to the one used in the CML for chemical warnings:

• Black – Extinct (EX) or Critically Endangered (CE) - species is extinct or facing an extremely high risk of extinction.  Species that have been listed as extirpated in a US state (locally extinct) are also included in this category.
• Red – Endangered (EN) - species is facing a facing a very high risk of extinction. Pharos also places most endangered species warnings from organizations that do not use the IUCN classification system into this category.
• Orange – Vulnerable (VU) - species is facing a high risk of extinction. Frequently referred to as Threatened.
• Yellow – Near Threatened (NT) - species is not yet considered vulnerable or endangered, but is close to qualifying for or is likely to qualify for a threatened category in the near future. Species not yet evaluated (NE) are included here.  Data deficient species (DD) are also included in this category where more information is required and the possibility that future research will show that threatened classification is appropriate.
• Green – Least Concern (LC) – species is still widespread and abundant

The CML’s current 800+ entries are drawn from US federal and state threatened and endangered species listings, species listed by the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES) and species identified by the World Wildlife Fund and Rainforest Relief.  This is a work in progress with more lists in the queue for addition over the coming months.  Currently, the species warning listings are available as a stand-alone search in the CML.  Shortly, we will be integrating them into the Pharos product listings as well.

Since most Pharos users will rarely know the actual scientific name – the genus and species – of the wood products you are considering, we are adding common trade names and synonyms for each species.  If you can’t find the wood name that you are seeking, let us know by using the comment link in the upper right hand corner and we will do our best to link it to a species in the CML and let you know what we find out about its status.

We hope you find this new Pharos feature useful and we look forward to hearing your opinions as we further expand our analysis of biobased materials. 
 

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PEER HITS COAL WASTE IN BUILDING PRODUCTS

 

If you have been working to eliminate mercury exposure and contamination, it is well worth reading the comments filed yesterday by Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (http://www.peer.org) objecting to EPA's proposal to promote the beneficial use of coal ash wastes in a wide array of products from cement to cosmetics. 

As a PEER website catalogues, "coal ash is everywhere." In the built environment, coal ash is present in a wide array of  materials, from carpet backing to acoustical ceiling tiles.

The concern is that the ubiquitous use of  60 million tons of coal ash annually as "recycled content"  violates the precautionary principle because the environmental and health consequences of the mercury content of the ash being mixed into so many products are unknown and largely have not been investigated.  Not incidentally, PEER argues that by promoting the beneficial use of coal ash wastes the federal government is also undermining efforts to reduce the amount of coal burned for energy in the US.  The comments cite (beginning at p.12) research by Jim Vallette from our Pharos Project documenting mercury emissions from factories manufacturing gypsum wallboard, a.k.a. "sheetrock," using ash wastes generated by the stack desulfurization process at coal burning power plants.   

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Earthbeat Radio is broadcasting an encore edition of a talk with Pharos senior researcher Jim Vallette.  "As the 5th anniversary of Hurrance Katrina and Hurricane Rita approaches, Jim explains how imported toxic drywall poses health risks for Gulf Coast survivors as they attempt to rebuild their homes and lives."

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CARPETS: HELP US ROLL THEM OUT

 

The Pharos Project is in the process of opening a new product category, carpets. This category is particularly complex.

Carpets are really multi-component assemblies of backing, binder, fiber, and treatments. Typically, these components are manufactured by upstream suppliers, then assembled in the carpet factories.  Carpet manufacturers sell hundreds of styles, which in turn have many color options.   And, to make matters even more confusing, manufacturers frequently change the name of styles, making product names obsolete.

In order to provide evaluations that inform Pharos users’ selection practices, we need to know how you go about selecting carpets.  We also would like you to identify backings, fibers, and other components in which you are most interested. 

Your feedback will help us determine how best to collect and display the data that are most important to you.

Please click here to take the survey.

Many large carpet manufacturers have expressed a willingness to submit product data for Pharos evaluation.    If you represent a carpet manufacturer and have not been contacted by us yet, please send us an email and we’ll get the process started.

Whether you are a purchaser or a manufacturer, we look forward to hearing from you.  Thanks!
 

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VIEWS FROM THE INTERN DESK

 

Greetings from the HBN Pharos interns, Kelsey Poole and Sarah Lott. For the past eight weeks we have been working with HBN staff to expand the Pharos database. Kelsey recently graduated from American University with a BA in Environmental Studies. Sarah is a junior at James Madison University pursuing a degree in Biotechnology. As our internship draws to a close, the HBN staff has invited us to share our thoughts on the Pharos Project and our experience working on it.

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Our work with Pharos has primarily been researching and entering new products into the database. We helped open categories for insulations, ceiling tiles and wood flooring. We also conducted foundational research for these and other upcoming categories. Our other project was finding contact information for the companies in the database so that HBN can request further information and invite the manufacturer’s participation. We certainly know a lot more about building products now than when we started!

While we accomplished a lot, most of our time was spent trying to overcome the many challenges facing Pharos. Transparency is a point that has been discussed many times in this blog, and we can attest that transparency is a key issue for the health and sustainability of the buildings we live in. There were many times when researching a product that we found little information or literature available from the manufacturer. Too often we found that the MSDS had no material content information, due to exemptions in the EPA Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA) Chemical Substance Inventory. This makes it extremely difficult for anyone to effectively judge how safe and sustainable the product really is.

This is the problem that the people at HBN deal with every day and are constantly working to alleviate. By collaborating with manufacturers to disclose more information, Pharos helps consumers make better decisions about what goes into their buildings. The Pharos Project is not so much about the products it scores, but more about making information available about the materials with which we build. There is no guarantee that manufacturers will improve their practices and make safer building materials just because Pharos gives them a bad score—but they certainly won’t change if no one makes such an effort.

We’ve seen the database expand tremendously in the past weeks. Even though we’re leaving, Pharos will continue to grow. After working with the energetic staff of HBN, we believe this project can have a huge impact on green building and are excited to see where Pharos will go in the future.

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TRENDS IN TRANSPARENCY

 

Think “transparency” is an established, maturing theme? You ain’t seen nothing yet.
Trendwatching.com

The news this summer provides more insight into why the assortment of eco-labels and certifications that define green products today is a transitional stage, soon to be eclipsed by an unprecedented convergence of better information and better information technology known as radical transparency.

A new report by the World Resources Institute finds that after more than a decade of refinement, eco-labeling and third party product certifications are not working well. They have become “fragmented and often confusing to institutional buyers as well as individual consumers . . . due to competing claims on what makes a product ‘green,’ especially when there are two or more competing schemes for the same sector or product.”[1] The WRI report, The Global Ecolabel Monitor 2010, analyzes more than 300 eco-labels and third party eco-certifications, including virtually all of the iconic labels of the green building industry. The report identifies stubborn barriers to effective eco-labeling that are also likely to handicap ambitious new corporate sustainability and transparency standards announced this summer.[2] Among the barriers noted by WRI:

• It is difficult to define best practices for ecolabels or standards. (Value judgments are inherent in such standards.)
• Competing standards are inevitable. (Well-funded industry labels routinely compete with independent third party standards, confusing consumers.)
• Sustainability standards are rarely static. (Our Pharos Team recently found that most paints beat eco-label requirements by 50% or more.)

“What if finding out where and how our stuff was made was as easy as finding the lowest price or peer opinions?” asks The New York Times contributing writer Rob Walker in the June 27 installment of his weekly column, Consumed. Walker, an astute observer of consumer trends in the digital age, addresses the gap between the “transparency triumph” that has changed the paradigm of retail marketing completely (think NextTag, Tripadvisor, or Amazon Reviews), and the relative lack of transparency in the “brand/production relationship” which still more often than not “remains murky until bad news pushes it into the open.”

What’s changing, writes Walker, is that “knowing something” about a particular product “resonates with consumers more than an aggregate score or a big-picture summary.” His measured reaction to a lengthy sustainability report published by the Gap mirrors the reaction of many green building professionals to the proliferation of corporate sustainability reports in the building products industry: “On one level, it’s admirable that the company discloses, for instance, that as of 2008, 11.8 percent of its Southeast Asia factories received a “needs improvement” rating. But as a practical matter, how does that relate to your specific T-shirt or the khakis you’re considering?” Or the carpet you are specifying?

The overwhelming volume and complexity of supply chain information makes it unlikely that commercial buyers will base a multimillion dollar contract decision on a Yelp review of a vendor, or a YouTube video documenting chemical hazards of PVC. Walker sees a future, however, where the mere availability of such information is itself the catalyst for positive change. He concludes with a vision that describes the future of radical transparency in the green building industry: “Imagine an open-source effort emerging to make that brand/production relationship much less opaque than it is.” He writes, “I don’t expect that most consumers would actually turn every impulse buy into a research project, but I bet it would change the way brands scrutinize their supply chains if they knew that every thing we buy was really, truly transparent.” We’re betting on it too.

Footnotes

[1] The Global Ecolabel Monitor 2010, p. 3.

[2] Just before Memorial Day, Greenbiz and Underwriters Laboratories announced the creation of a LEED-like global sustainability standard for companies. In late June, Interface, the maker of modular carpet, expanded its program for providing Environmental Product Declarations (EPDs) for its products.

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PHAROS WEBINAR ARCHIVE AND TUTORIALS NOW AVAILABLE

 
 Missed one of our free webinars this summer? Or did you attend one and want to share with colleagues? 

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CONGRESS PASSES CA-BASED FORMALDEHYDE LIMITS FOR COMPOSITE WOOD

 

The US Congress has approved legislation[1] to limit allowable emissions of formaldehyde from composite wood products, specifically hardwood plywood, particleboard and medium-density fiberboard sold in the United States. The new limits in are based on the levels established for the State of California in 2007 by the California Air Resources Board (CARB).

This is good news for reducing the serious toll that this known carcinogen takes on human health through widespread exposures in homes, offices and schools from building materials. The legislation should serve as a strong wake up call to the industry and help increase availability of low-formaldehyde and formaldehyde-free materials for the green designer. It is, however, only one piece of the puzzle in getting formaldehyde out of our buildings.

Although the regulations list emissions standards that kick in as early as July of 2011 and 2012, the EPA has two and a half years – until January 2013 – to promulgate regulations to implement the standards and retailers will be allowed to “sell-through” their inventory even beyond that point. Exemptions abound, including hardboard, structural plywood, structural composite lumber, OSB, glue-lams and wood I-joists, finger-jointed lumber, wood packaging, plus some exceptions for windows, exterior and garage doors, vehicles, boats and aircraft. Other important areas of formaldehyde use in building products, such as insulation and textiles, are not addressed by the legislation.

Finally, the new federal legislation reduces formaldehyde emissions but does not eliminate them.  The California Air Resources Board says bluntly that there is no known safe level for this carcinogen and avoidance is the best approach. There is a labeling option in the federal legislation for indicating “no-added formaldehyde-base binder,” but formaldehyde-based binders will still be widespread in products after this legislation goes into effect. So although this legislation will represent an important step for reducing the health impacts of formaldehyde in buildings, smart designers will continue to use Pharos to find and evaluate the increasing number of products available across categories that avoid all added formaldehyde.

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[1] S. 1660: Formaldehyde Standards for Composite Wood Products Act 

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HEALTHY PAINTS PART 2: BEYOND VOC CONTENT – GETTING THE TOXICS OUT

 

Last week we described the major reductions in VOC content we are seeing in paints (Paint Industry Drives Toward Zero VOCs – Will Certifications Catch Up?). But does a low-VOC content number mean these paints are actually safe from the perspective of environmental health? Not necessarily.

As we described in an earlier blog (Sorting Out The VOCs), the total VOC (TVOC) criteria originally was established by the EPA to control product emissions of smog forming compounds into the environment, not to control direct indoor air health impacts.  With the focus on smog formation, TVOC is a very incomplete measure of the potential health impact of chemicals of concern in a product.  By official EPA definition, TVOC exempts some VOCs from measurement because they don’t contribute to smog formation even though they otherwise may be quite toxic.  There is no “safe” level of VOCs, except where products contain absolutely no VOCs including the exempt compounds.  Very few paint manufacturers indicate whether the VOC content levels of their products include the non-smog forming, exempt compounds. Setting the Pharos VOC filter at 7 screens out all but those few that have stated clearly that their product contains no VOCs, including exempted VOCs.

Looking only at a product’s VOC content does not tell the whole story of the product’s potential harm from VOCs.  As paints cure, they can sometimes create and emit formaldehyde or other VOCs during the curing process.  Both the GreenGuard & Scientific Certification Systems (SCS) programs now certify paints, by looking at the potential for long-term VOC emissions. The MPI Extreme Green program also requires emissions testing before certifying the products. The problem is that the standard upon which these programs are based (California 01350) is designed to identify and evaluate only long-term emissions, not the short-term blast of emissions that comes in the first few hours and days after the paint is applied to the wall.

Until good short-term testing protocols are developed for paints (and other wet-applied products), another measure of potential VOC harm for the indoor environment is to look at the VOC content.  Pharos gives the highest VOC scores to products that both reduce VOC content to zero (including exempted compounds) and meet the long-term VOC tests embodied in the California 01350 standard.  With the new California 01350 higher residential standard in effect, specifiers should require that paint products meet this more rigorous level that we wrote about last month (A New Voc Standard & New Tools From Pharos To Help You Get The VOCs Out).

Finally, VOCs (both content and emissions) are not the only potentially unhealthy chemicals associated with paint.  Although lead has long been removed from paint, plenty of other non-volatile, but still toxic chemicals remain in paints.  Most of the certification programs have some limits on other toxic content of the paints.  The Green Seal chemical screen is by far the most extensive.  Green Seal includes a list of 25 chemicals that cannot be in Green Seal-certified paint, but also references authoritative lists of carcinogens, mutagens, reproductive toxins, hazardous air pollutants or ozone-depleting compounds similar to the Pharos Chemical and Material Library lists that we use to create the User Toxicity scores.  GreenSeal publishes a list of products that meet the new, rigorous Green Seal Standard.  Very few paints are certified under the new Green Seal program, but we hope to see more upcoming.

Want healthy paints? You can find them in Pharos. Start with the wide selection of paints now available with VOC content levels at 25 g/l or below (those that score 6 or higher in VOC). Better yet, go for paint containing zero VOCs and ask manufacturers if that zero includes exempt compounds (there are at least 3 in Pharos that meet that high standard).  And finally, for the best paints available, don’t stop at VOC content.  Look for those that avoid all toxic content by seeking Green Seal certification or a high Pharos User Toxicity score.* 

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* Note that the Green Seal paint certification program was updated in 2008 and certifications under the previous version are no longer valid. Several paint companies that certified to the previous version, however, have not recertified to the new updated version, yet still claim to "meet Green Seal" or even to be "Green Seal certified." Always confirm that a paint is still certified before accepting a manufacturer Green Seal claim.  

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LOOKING UP: DISCOVERING WHAT’S OVER OUR HEADS

 

Anyone who finds themselves in a hospital, as a visitor or patient, has plenty of idle time sitting or reclining, looking around – as “islandtime” writes on a poetry discussion board - “thinking about the patient, where the ceiling tiles came from, how hospital sounds can mimic outdoor sounds, the way the techs and nurses are all dressed the same.”  

For those who wonder about, and those who specify, ceiling tiles, the Pharos Project is exploring “where the ceiling tiles came from.”  This week, our Building Product Library published the first diverse set of ceiling tile evaluations.

Our research into acoustical ceiling tiles indicates a very complex category.  The contents and additives in ceiling tiles vary greatly.  The primary core materials for acoustical ceiling tiles are mineral wool, fiberglass, or gypsum.  Specialty tiles and panels may be made of wood, metal, recycled glass, and even jute.  Facing materials range from paper to vinyl to antimicrobial paints.  Within each type of tile, the amount of recycled and renewable content differs significantly from product to product.

Moreover, we have identified issues that may concern Pharos users: the widespread use of biocides, flame retardants, and formaldehyde-based binders, some of which are not disclosed in company literature.  We have found carcinogenic flame retardants and biocides being released from ceiling tile plants – with no corresponding information about these chemicals on manufacturers’ websites. 

Pharos Project subscribers will find several ceiling tiles in the system that use urea phenol formaldehyde and biocides.  Some use a lot of recycled material.  You will find further information about these and other ingredients in the Chemical and Material Library section of Pharos.  We will also detail these and other concerns – as well as the positive attributes – of products in upcoming Signal blogs.

Many of our users, who specify millions of square feet of health care and other facilities per year, understand the importance of any decision on specifying ceiling tiles.   Ceilings represent one of the largest surface areas in any interior.  Suspended ceiling tiles and panels lie at the intersection of building ventilation systems and occupied space.   They are receptors and sources of Volatile Organic Compounds and other toxicants.

Our research and evaluations of ceiling tiles should help users identify which panels use and emit the fewest toxicants and incorporate the most renewable materials. Then, when patients and visitors are staring up at some hospital room ceiling, the view will be healthy. 

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HEALTHY PAINTS PART 1: PAINT INDUSTRY DRIVES TOWARD ZERO VOCS – WILL CERTIFICATIONS CATCH UP?

 

Low-VOC labels and certifications abound on the paint shelves today. What do they all mean?  Not necessarily what you think. 

First, let’s look at the certifications.  Green Seal, EcoLogo, CRGI GreenWise and MPI Green Performance all base their certifications on VOC content – and 50 grams/liter (g/l) is the magic number.  Almost every single one of the certifications sets 50 g/l as the maximum VOC content for flat sheen paints. (Flat sheens are primarily for ceilings and walls, with a matte look and are the least scrubbable of the sheens).

The consensus goes out the window for other sheens, such as semi-gloss, gloss, satin or eggshell (each preferable for different areas/parts of a building, depending on need for moisture resistance, scrubbability, and/or shine).  MPI holds its threshold to 50 g/l for all sheens, while GreenSeal and CRGI allow up to 100 g/l for the non-flat sheens.  EcoLogo has a more complex set of criteria, limiting interior non-flat paints to 100 g/l, 125 g/l for exterior non-flat sheens and 150 g/l for gloss sheens. 

Some of the relevant government standards are running ahead of the third party certification programs. Since 2008, the South Coast Air Quality Management District (SCAQMD) has mandated a standard maximum VOC content of 50 g/l for flat and non-flat paints/coatings used in buildings in Southern California.  The SCAQMD standard is used by the LEED certification system as the standard for credits in its certification program.

Meanwhile, in many cases, the paint industry is ahead of both the certifications and standards.  All of the 23 semi-gloss paints (non-flat) Pharos evaluated as of June 8, 2010 have VOC content less than 50 g/l – and hence meet the lowest current standard.  But they don’t stop there.  Almost three quarters of those paints (17) have less than half the allowed VOC content (that is less than 25 g/l). More than half (13) are close to or at zero VOC content (with 5 g/l or less).  Clearly the 50 g/l and higher thresholds of the standards and certifications are needlessly high and the discerning specifier can hold out for much better paint specifications.

You can do better than the certifications and standards by using the Pharos scoring filter to find paint products with lower VOC content in the Pharos Building Products Library.  Setting the filter to a minimum VOC score of 6 will only display those products with VOC content of 25 g/l or less.  A minimum VOC score of 7 will limit the display to those paints with true zero VOCs.*  Despite standards and certification programs, there is no need to accept paint with VOC content even close to 50 g/l anymore. 

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*“True zero VOCs” here refers to the fact that most VOC disclosures by manufacturers only include the VOCs that contribute to smog formation. Other VOCs are exempt even though they may have health effects. To get a VOC score of 7 a product must be known to have no VOC including these exempt VOCs, See Sorting Out The VOCs for more about this issue.

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ANTIMICROBIALS IN PAINTS - ADDING COST AND RISK FOR NO KNOWN BENEFIT

 

Antimicrobial use in building materials, including paints and coatings, has grown rapidly in recent years and is coming under increasing scrutiny as concerns about health impacts and effectiveness rise. 

There is a wide range of antimicrobial use in paints and coatings.  Most manufacturers, with some exceptions (e.g. epoxy-based paints and coatings), use “in-can preservatives” to prevent mold and fungal growth in the can and keep the paint from spoiling. They claim that because latex is made from starch, it is a good food source for bacteria.[1]  Other manufacturers add what they call “biocides” or mildewcides to exterior coatings to prevent algae and mold growth.  Additionally, some manufacturers add antimicrobials to their products explicitly to claim antimicrobial protection on the surface of the coating once it has cured, even for interior applications.

Aggressively marketed for enhanced infection control, antimicrobials are used in paint to inhibit mold (as well as in other interior finish products, including carpet, privacy curtains and upholstery fabric, wallcovering, wall protection, and door hardware/handles).  In some products, metals, such as silver, are impregnated into the product to provide the antimicrobial properties.  In others, products such as Microban are used as antimicrobials, made from the chemical Triclosan, a chemical of concern because of its acute toxicity.

Research indicates that environmental concerns exist from the manufacturing processes associated with antimicrobials (e.g. metals may be released into our water, soil, and air—the same metals that ironically may contribute to antibiotic resistance). Silver, in particular, has been linked with bacterial resistance.[2]  Antimicrobials can also lead to what is known as “cross-resistance,” whereby through an intricate process, bacteria become resistant to the antimicrobial itself, as well as to a whole host of other antibiotics.

At the same time, serious questions are being raised as to whether added antimicrobials even serve a measurably useful function in interior finishes. The efficacy of antimicrobials has been called into question by several independent studies. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) concluded a 2003 comprehensive study of infection control practice with the statement that “No evidence is available to suggest that use of these [antimicrobial] products will make consumers and patients healthier or prevent disease. No data support the use of these items as part of a sound infection-control strategy.”[3]  Kaiser Permanente similarly concluded in a December 2006 position statement that “[w]e do not recommend environmental surface finishes or fabrics that contain antimicrobials for the purpose of greater infection control and the subsequent prevention of hospital acquired infections.”  KP states that there is “no evidence that environmental surface finishes or fabrics containing antimicrobials assist in preventing infections.”  Rather, the organization recommends strict hand hygiene and environmental surface cleaning and disinfection.[4]

Meanwhile, more and more products are being introduced with added antimicrobials.  Just this week, the Pharos Team received an e-mail announcing a new product from Jamestown Coating Technologies, SurfaGuard.™ The e-mail claims that SurfaGuard™ antimicrobial paints and coatings are designed to “provide an extra defensive shield against bacteria, molds, and fungi.  The new product…incorporates silver ions via a new nanotechnology, SmartSilver™ that are proven to work against microbes.”  

In light of the fact that the growing market for such added antimicrobials seems to be at odds with the science, Pharos would like to remind our subscribers that when they get claims from manufacturers about added antimicrobials in products, that the experts at the CDC have said, “No evidence is available to suggest that use of these [antimicrobial] products will make consumers and patients healthier or prevent disease. No data support the use of these items as part of a sound infection-control strategy.”[5]  The whole added antimicrobial discussion reminds me of my parental role every time my kids come to me after seeing an advertisement for the newest pair of jeans or the most up-to-date PlayStation game - just because the advertiser says you need something, that doesn’t mean you really do! 

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[1] Only a very few acrylic paint manufacturers do not add some type of preservative in the can. In the past, mercury was added to paint, which acted both as an in-can preservative and as an antimicrobial additive.   For some time in the 1990’s, formaldehyde replaced mercury and was used to provide these protections.  In the 21st century, chemical compounds such as benzisothiazolin-3-one (BIT) or methylisothiazolin (MIT) are used as in-can preservatives.  Further study beyond the scope of this blog is needed to learn more about these different applications and the chemical compounds associated with them. When manufacturers disclose in-can biocides, we have included them in the product evaluation. 

[2] “Antimicrobial Chemicals in Buildings: Hygiene or Harm” Environmental Building News, Volume 16, Number 8. August 2007 p 13.

[3] Centers for Guidelines for Environmental Infection Control in Health-Care Facilities Recommendations of CDC and the Healthcare Infection Control Practices Advisory Committee (HICPAC)
(http://www.cdc.gov/ncidod/dhqp/pdf/guidelines/Enviro_guide_03.pdf).

[4] Kaiser Permanente,” Evaluation of Antimicrobial Property Claims in Finishes and Fabrics," December 1, 2006. (http://www.healthybuilding.net/healthcare/KP_Antimicrobial_Position_Paper.pdf) 

[5] CDC.  Op. cit.

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NEW EPA STUDY CONFIRMS HEALTH DANGERS OF FORMALDEHYDE; PHAROS REVIEWS FORMALDEHYDE-FREE INSULATIONS

 

Leukemia and other cancers of the lymph nodes, blood, bone marrow and spleen… neurotoxicity, reproductive toxicity, developmental toxicity and immunotoxicity… respiratory tract pathology, asthma, and increased allergic sensitization.  A major EPA review of the science on formaldehyde, released in draft form this week,* affirms that the science is conclusive that formaldehyde is linked to all of these health effects in humans. This report further legitimizes longstanding concerns about formaldehyde within the building industry.

The good news is that it is getting easier to avoid formaldehyde in products such as composite wood and batt insulation.  Manufacturers are responding to the growing awareness that formaldehyde-based binders can release hazardous quantities of carcinogenic formaldehyde into occupied spaces– even through drywall.  For example, the Pharos database now lists five batt insulation products claiming no formaldehyde in their binders.  Three of them are fiberglass-based, one uses plastic fibers and one uses cotton fibers.  

Are the alternatives less hazardous? None of the batt insulation manufacturers have been particularly forthcoming about the chemical content of their alternative binders. Through patent research, however, the Pharos team has been able to learn enough about the formulas to evaluate some of them and determine that several of the alternatives are less hazardous.

A few of the Johns Manville products use an Aquaset binder from Rohm & Hass, which achieved the best VOC and User Toxicity scores in Pharos, with SCS Indoor Advantage Plus Formaldehyde Free certification confirming their low-VOC emissions and formaldehyde-free claims.  Pharos patent research confirmed that none of the chemicals in the Aquaset binder raise as high a level of concern as formaldehyde – all of them receive orange or lower flags in the Pharos Chemical and Material Library.

The Knauf EcoBatt products use the Ecose binder, for which we only found orange flagged or better chemicals in the patents. They are, however, reportedly making the insulation on the same machines as their other formaldehyde-based products and so Knauf acknowledges that Ecose products may have trace amounts of urea phenol formaldehyde binder. This should result in far less formaldehyde releases than a UPF-bound product, but it means the products can’t pass the Pharos formaldehyde-free filter until they complete the transition. Not only is the binder formaldehyde-free, but it is also partially plant-based, However, since the binder makes up 17% or less of the overall product content and the plant component is only 20% of the binder, the total bio-based content (about 3%) is too small to affect renewable material scoring.

The third fully characterized and scored product is Dow’s SafeTouch product.  Dow replaced the itchy fiberglass with a non-itch PET fiber – good news for anyone who has handled fiberglass. However, with no VOC certifications and Pharos patent research revealing two red-flagged carcinogenic chemicals in the binder, this product scores very poorly in Pharos’ VOC, User Toxicity and Manufacturer and Community Toxicity categories.  Also disappointing is the lack of any recycled content.  Given the high amount of PET bottles being recycled these days, Dow appears to be ignoring a good opportunity for high recycled content.

The final fiberglass product that is advertised as formaldehyde-free is CertainTeed’s Sustainable Insulation line. Certified for low-VOC emissions to Greenguard Children & Schools, and with higher post-consumer recycled glass content pushing its renewable material score above the other fiberglass products, this could be an appealing option. The Canadian version claims 65-70% post consumer glass - more than any other fiberglass product. The manufacturer, however, has not revealed any substantive information about the binder, claiming only that it is “similar to sugar.” Pharos has not yet found a patent corresponding to the product registered in the U.S.  Since we have yet to learn the contents of the alternative plant-based binder, the User Toxicity score is low and the product won’t yet make it through the Pharos formaldehyde-free filter.  (No product can pass a Pharos chemical filter unless the manufacturer has fully disclosed the product’s contents or we have found them through patent research.)  Encourage your CertainTeed sales reps to disclose the contents of this product in Pharos to get fully rated.

Bonded Logic’s entrant in the formaldehyde-free race is Ultra Touch, a cotton batt with a polyolefin binder using recycled material from the clothing industry. The renewable material score is only half what it could be due to their use of post-industrial rather than post-consumer material content (send your old jeans to Ultra Touch!), but still places near the top of the batt insulations for use of renewable material. Unfortunately, while this product has been tested for low VOC emissions, Bonded Logic has not yet disclosed any details of their polyolefin binder, lowering Ultra Touch’s User Toxicity score. While we have no reason to question the formaldehyde-free claim, the product also won’t show up in the formaldehyde-free filter until the company discloses the chemicals they use in the binder.

Cotton is not the only bio-based solution making it into the market. We are currently evaluating several insulation products made from sheep’s wool. They appear not to use any binder at all, but may require fumigants to avoid moth infestations. Watch Pharos for more information about these products in the future.

In an increasing number of product categories, like batt insulation, innovative manufacturers are developing products that avoid the concerns raised in the new EPA report on formaldehyde and we can send a message to accelerate this change through careful product selection. As we have seen with batt insulation, however, finding out what is inside is challenging. When we do learn what’s inside we discover that some of the alternatives represent real improvements with lower toxicity while others continue the use of red flagged hazardous chemicals. Pharos users should insist that all of these manufacturers be more transparent and forthcoming about the chemicals used to make their alternative binders and reward those that are formulating with less hazardous chemicals.

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* The US Environmental Protection Agency released its “Draft Toxicological Review of Formaldehyde in Support of Summary Information on the Integrated Risk Information System (IRIS)” on June 2, 2010 for a public comment period ending August 31, 2010.  

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SHINE AND COLOR MATTER: PAINT TINTS, SHEENS AND HUMAN HEALTH

 

There are thousands of paint products on the market today.  For interior paint products, manufacturers offer a variety of sheens: flat, eggshell, gloss, semi-gloss.   And, for each sheen, the product is offered in a whole host of base tint options: neutral, white tint, pastel tint, dark tint, etc.

In Pharos, we started the standard paint category with information on a subset of glosses and tints – focusing on semi-gloss paints with a white or light tint base.  Marketing materials from paint manufacturers, however, don’t necessarily tell users that there may be health hazard differences associated with the various sheens or base tints. In our research looking at the technical documents behind the marketing claims, however, we have discovered that the sheen and tint base can matter when it comes to buying paint and our health.

For example, Glidden Professional, Akzo Nobel’s commercial product line, offers an interior/exterior product known as Lifemaster Oil Int./Ext. paint, available in eggshell, semi-gloss and gloss.   The product is marketed as “sustainable,” and listed on the company’s “Think Impact” website.  The Think Impact product lines are advertised by Akzo Nobel as: "[P]roducts with specific characteristics that offer environmental benefits for your projects.  We're working toward lowering our environmental impact at every step of the product lifecycle, while keeping in mind current regulations and anticipating future requirements."

Think Impact products strive for sustainability in reducing the carbon footprint, waste, energy and promoting water conservation – all laudable goals that Akzo Nobel should be commended for.

But what of the health hazards associated with the products?

The product line offers paint that meets Green Seal and SCAQMD requirements – <50 g/L, but just barely.

• The eggshell has the highest VOC content – ranging from 48-50 g/L (depending on tint base).
• The semi-gloss has similar VOC content between 47 and 49 g/L.
• The gloss, however, has significantly lower VOC content, with a wide range depending on tint base – from 31 g/L (white tint base) to 45 g/L (deep tint base).

The company’s marketing materials don’t tell you that the eggshell and semi-gloss have higher VOC content than the gloss.  The advertising simply tells you that the product line is < 50g/L because that is what is required to meet Green Seal and SCAQMD.  But is that all that really matters?

A careful side-by-side comparison of the material safety data sheets (MSDS) for these products reveals that not only do eggshell and semi-gloss have higher VOC content, but it is probably at least in part due to the presence of xylene - a volatile organic compound known to be neurotoxic in humans. In contrast, xylene is not listed as a material ingredient in the gloss formula, which has the lower VOC content.

Another chemical that appears in some, but not all of, the sheens and tint bases for Lifemaster Oil Int./Ext. is a cobalt compound, cobalt neodecanoate.  Cobalt compounds are listed as carcinogens by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA).  In Lifemaster Oil, you find cobalt in all the semi-gloss dark base tints, but not in the white base tint.  In the eggshell and gloss versions, cobalt is in all of the tints, even the white tint base.

The Pharos team unearthed the chemical content information by looking specifically at the MSDS for the gloss product.  To be able to advertise that they are truly sustainable, shouldn’t manufacturers be transparent in their marketing materials as well, letting you know that their products may contain chemicals that could be harmful to human health?  Shouldn’t manufacturers tell you that their gloss paint does not contain xylene, or that some of their paint mixtures contain an OSHA carcinogen?

Architects, designers and other specifiers of paint should not be expected to dig deep into technical documents and cross reference chemical ID numbers (CAS #s), in order to determine whether a product is safe to put on the walls of a building.  Pharos can help – but ultimately, it should be the manufacturer’s obligation to be transparent and let users know what really is in their products. 

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MOSSVILLE, AT THE CROSSROADS OF ENVIRONMENTAL JUSTICE AND GREEN BUILDING

 

As I spend my days within a world of data, certifications, lunch and learns, and labels, I often remind myself why I do this for a living. I think of people living on the front lines of industrial production that I hope will one day benefit from my work. People that I have met in communities struggling for the basic right to clean air and uncontaminated water. Communities like Mossville, Louisiana.

Tonight at 8pm eastern on CNN, viewers will have an opportunity to get a sense of the day-to-day reality of life in a community that produces many of the chemical building blocks of our petro-chemical-based economy. “Toxic Towns,” an hour-long investigative story hosted by Dr. Sanjay Gupta, looks at Mossville, a small Louisiana community near Lake Charles, that hosts 14 industrial facilities and is in an area known as the “vinyl capital of the world.”

Mossville residents suffer from a variety of serious health impacts related to the disproportionate concentration of industrial facilities in their community. Their struggle was first brought to national attention by the 2002 HBO documentary, Blue Vinyl. In March of this year, the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights of the Organization of American States (OAS) ruled in favor of admitting a human rights complaint filed on behalf of the residents of Mossville. It is the first time the commission has taken jurisdiction over an environmental racism case in the United States.

What brought on this unprecedented intervention? Take an hour tonight to take a look at what it really means to live on the fenceline -downwind of the factories that make the plastics with which we build. It may not be the easiest program to watch but if you are like me, it will make you feel better about what you are trying to do.

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PHAROS UNVEILS NEW PRODUCT CATEGORY – INTERIOR SEMI-GLOSS PAINTS

 
Today, we introduce a new product category to the Pharos Project, interior paints (CSI 09 91 23).  Interior paints are ubiquitous in our commercial and residential buildings.  Often the paint product we use at home is the same product used in a medical office building or in our children’s schools.

There are hundreds of paint products on the market today.  In early spring, we sent a request to the leading paint manufacturers, asking them to provide information about their paint products, with a focus on the products that they consider to be the most “green.”  Many of those products you will see displayed in Pharos in the upcoming weeks.

In order to keep the list manageable and provide a consistent comparison across products, we list only the semi-gloss version of each product.  In subsequent blogs, we will discuss some of the toxicity differences associated with sheens and tints, to help specifiers identify potential issues related to the variety of offerings from paint manufacturers.

When you view the products, you will see a range of high and low scores, depending on the impact category.   Some products score high in the VOC (volatile organic compound) impact category, with zero VOC content; while other products scored poorly in Manufacturing Toxicity (MfrTox), because manufacturers chose not to disclose fully the material contents of those materials. 

One of the many things we learned undertaking the research for both high performance coatings (HPCs) and interior paints is that there is a wide range of disclosure from paint manufacturers.  Some report a long list of chemicals and materials that are included in a product’s ingredients, while others report merely one or two chemicals/materials, sometimes accounting for only 5-10% of what is actually in the product.  Not only does this remind us how limited Material Safety Data Sheets (MSDS) can be, but should inspire Pharos Project users to urge manufacturers to disclose fully the chemicals and other ingredients in their products. 

We’ve learned several things about interior paints that we will be discussing further in upcoming blog posts:

• Interior paints avoid some of the most toxic chemicals used in HPCs because interior paints do not require the durability expected of HPCs.  For example, our research and manufacturer disclosure indicate that the endocrine disruptor bisphenol A (BPA) found in many HPCs is not included in interior paints.
• Added tints and different sheen types sometimes come with additional VOCs or other changes in the toxic content of interior paint products.  Some manufacturers have invested resources in developing zero- or low-VOC tints, which is a welcome innovation. 
  
• Some manufacturers are adding antimicrobials to paints, with questionable efficacy.  In addition, most paints have biocides added to the can to prevent mold and sour smells before opening. 
  
• Current certification programs and low VOC regulatory standards for paints – even GreenSeal and SCAQMD – are generally lagging well behind the market today.  Many paint companies have offered low- (<25 g/L) or zero-VOC paint for several years now, while the standards and certifications mostly allow anything under 50 g/L as “low VOC”.  It is time for the standards to catch up to what industry can deliver. 
• There is still much controversy about how to measure short-term VOC emissions from wet applied products.  As a result, interior paints (unlike carpets, resilient flooring and other non-wet interior finish products) are currently evaluated on the actual content of VOCs in the product, rather than their emissions.

There are some strong products on the market that contain zero- or low-VOCs.  However, because of chemical exclusions from VOC measurements and the potential presence of hazardous non-VOCs, full disclosure of material content is required to really understand what products can release into our homes, our offices, our schools, and our hospitals.  Very few of the manufacturers who entered data about their products chose to fully disclose 100% of their contents.  We are confident that engaging in the Pharos Project can transform the market so that paint manufacturers begin to be more forthright in sharing what their products contain.

 

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FOAM BOARD INSULATIONS: PLAGUED BY OZONE, GLOBAL WARMING AND FIRE

 
 Foam board insulation presents one of the tougher challenges for green building. With excellent performance characteristics and high R values - from 4 to 5 per inch or beyond – foam boards have been very popular for insulating foundations, walls and roofs in high performance designs. As we’ve reviewed the chemistry of these foams for the Pharos Project, however, we’ve learned that the chemistry that goes into making the most popular foams - polyisocyanate, such as Thermax, expanded polystyrene (EPS) such as Falcon Foam and extruded polystyrene (XPS) such as Styrofoam – is highly problematic for human health and the environment.

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DISPATCHES FROM THE FUTURE – BUILDINGS THAT GIVE BACK & THE END OF PVC

 

“Imagine a future where what we build is another part of nature,” neatly sums up the regenerative aspirations of many at the Living Future UnConference last week in Seattle. This annual gathering of building professionals exploring the Living Building Challenge ranged widely over the leading edge of green building design, technologies and activism.

Citing the tremendous purchasing power now wielded by the green building movement, Cascadia ED, Jason McLennan, opened the conference with a strong challenge to the audience to be bold and flex that power for transformation in the industry by taking a united step together on all projects, not just their Living Building Challenge projects. As a first step he called on all firms to just say ‘no’ to specifying PVC backing in carpet anywhere.

The Pharos Project was there joining session topics ranging from water treatment using biomimicry to the role of green building in ending homelessness. Robin Guenther, a principal at Perkins + Will, and I engaged in a lively discussion with the audience on radical transparency and how to use tools like the Pharos Project and the Perkins+Will Precautionary List of chemicals to get carcinogens and reproductive toxicants out of our buildings and our bodies.

Robin’s colleague at Perkins + Will, Amanda Sturgeon, raised the challenge to move from toxic materials to those that actually restore the environment, describing a project in Sudbury, Ontario that used limestone surfacing elements to help reverse the acidification of a lake that had been devastated by nickel mining.

Can we transform our industry so that what we build becomes a regenerative part of nature that heals instead of a source of cancer to be cured? With tools like the Pharos Project working hand-in-hand with the Living Building Challenge, we think we can.

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GREEN JOBS, CANCER RISK, AND THE BUILDING MATERIALS INDUSTRY: HIGH SCHOOL STUDENTS GET THE CONNECTION

 
 The writing is on the wall for manufacturers of products and processes that use known and suspected carcinogens.  Or at least it’s in the President’s inbox.  The President’s Cancer Panel, an elite group of experts that has been dubbed “the Mount Everest of the medical mainstream” by New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof, released a report yesterday titled “Reducing Environmental Cancer Risk.”  The report is a call to action for a more rigorous and precautionary approach to chemical regulation, drawing particular attention to the need to reduce environmental and occupation exposure.  A big theme in their recommendations is transparency: “Workers, other populations with known exposures, and the general public require full disclosure of knowledge about environmental cancer risks.”

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PHAROS ADDS LIVING BUILDING CHALLENGE RED LIST TO SUITE OF FILTERS

 

Have you taken the Living Building Challenge (LBC)?

Launched by our partners at the Cascadia Region Green Building Council, LBC is a set of design criteria for high performance buildings – kind of a LEED Plus – that takes buildings a further step toward truly sustainable design. It shares with the Pharos Project a concern about the toxic properties of the chemicals currently used to make many of our building materials and addresses it in a Red List of chemicals that must be excluded from LBC buildings.

For this reason, Pharos has added the LBC Red List to its suite of filtering options – making life easier for designers and contractors who’ve taken the Living Building Challenge to exclude products containing red-listed chemicals, as well as for anyone trying to eliminate some of the worst carcinogens and endocrine-disrupting chemicals from their buildings.

This month, we are rolling out seven new filters. Two of the filters represent action lists from the LBC and the EPA:

Living Building Challenge Red List – LBC designers need to exclude products from their buildings that contain materials from a Red List that comprises 14 groups of chemicals chosen for their health and environmental impact. This is a tough set of criteria – so don’t be surprised at how few products make the cut. View the Living Building Challenge Red List in Pharos for a full description of the list and how it is applied.

EPA Chemicals of Concern – In December 2009, the US EPA announced a series of action plans to address five chemical classes that the agency has classified as Chemicals of Concern that warrant priority action to protect human health and the environment.

The other filters selectively exclude specific classes of chemicals that the LBC and the EPA have identified, one at a time:

Bisphenol A (BPA) – This chemical may damage developmental reproductive health and has gained infamy in polycarbonate water bottles and baby’s sippy cups. It is also a building block for the epoxies in many high performance coatings, caulks and composite materials.

Formaldehyde – A very potent carcinogen, with no safe level of exposure, that has been commonly used as a binder in composite wood and insulation.

Phthalates – Primarily used in building materials to make PVC flexible, chemicals in this group are endocrine disruptors and have been associated with asthma, cancer, obesity and reproductive/developmental problems.

Halogenated Flame Retardants (HFRs) – Used in polyurethane foams and other plastics, these highly persistent and bio-accumulative chemicals are similar to DDT and other banned pesticides, and are associated with developmental damage to the brain, thyroid and reproductive systems, as well as endocrine disruption and cancer.

Perfluorocompounds (PFCs) – Another set of highly persistent and bio-accumulative developmental toxicants used to make water and stain resistant materials and frictionless surfaces.

To use the new Pharos Project filters, select a product class from the Building Product Library, and then click the check boxes in the filter column on the right hand side for each chemical group desired. Click on “Apply Filters” and the list of products will be redrawn to exclude any products that contain the chemicals selected – including not only the content listing, but additives, monomers and catalysts from the manufacturing process that may still be found in trace amounts in the final product. Only products that have full disclosure of their material contents will appear in these lists.

Try out the filters. Learn more about what is hiding in the materials with which we build, and join the movement to rid our buildings of toxic chemicals.

Unfamiliar with the Living Building Challenge (LBC)? You can find out more about the LBC on line here or at Cascadia’s excellent annual Living Future Unconference in May or at a road show in a city near you this spring.

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A NEW VOC STANDARD & NEW TOOLS FROM PHAROS TO HELP YOU GET THE VOCS OUT

 

There is good news from the VOC standard-setting world addressing a big toxic problem in homes. And, the Pharos team has just rolled out new tools to help you take advantage of this development to make all of your buildings healthier.

The problem: VOCs - the volatile organic compounds that offgas from paints, new carpets, wallboard, insulation and many other products - are responsible for a variety of health problems, ranging from asthma to cancer. Readers of HBN News may recall that during our research into formaldehyde insulation binders a couple of years ago, we identified problems with the way VOC standards were being applied in homes. The 01350 Specification standard, which guides the leading VOC certification programs (including CHPS, FloorScore, Indoor Advantage Gold, GreenLabel Plus, Greenguard Children and Schools, and others), determines if any measured VOC emissions from a product are at safe levels. This determination is based on whether the ventilation system dilutes emissions enough to bring them below safe thresholds, as established by State of California scientists.

The problem is that homes - which generally don’t have ventilation systems - have much slower “air change rates.” Therefore, VOCs released in residences will not get diluted as much or as quickly as the Section 01350 standard anticipates. In fact, a study of over 100 new homes in California found air change rates were just a fraction of those in offices, resulting in formaldehyde and other VOCs skyrocketing in these residential settings far beyond recommended levels.

The solution: Concerned that homebuilders and homeowners were getting a false sense of security from use of these 01350-based VOC labels on products, HBN alerted the designers of the 01350 Specification and worked with them to redesign the standard to be health protective in homes. Last month, the California Department of Public Health issued a revised Version 1.1 Standard Method for use with the 01350 specification, with two important changes:

• A “residential scenario” that effectively addresses the lower air change rate problem for building products to be used in homes, and
• A new lower threshold for formaldehyde emissions for all building types that is optional now and mandatory starting in 2012.

Pharos tools put this solution to use: To help you understand the health impacts of the revised 01350 specification and other VOC standards applied to building products, the Pharos team established a new scoring category this week, which is solely based on the VOC content in products and VOC emissions from products. The higher the score, the healthier the product is in terms of VOCs. Under the new scoring protocol, products that meet the regular school & office 01350-based VOC standards receive a 7 (one point lower than in previous Pharos scoring). Products at this level can contribute to meeting LEED credits (such as NC EQ Credit 4.3 for flooring).

The scoring now helps you to evaluate products beyond current LEED standards. Any product that meets the new 01350 formaldehyde standard gets an 8, and those that meet the new residential standard receive a score of 9. A product with a full report from an independent laboratory showing no detection of any VOCs also gets a 9, and if that report is third party certified, the product attains the top score of 10.

>We are now also providing you more information about the certifications to help you understand and use them more effectively. Check the VOC Scoring Chart in the Pharos Framework to see how different certification programs score against the Pharos VOC criteria. Click through on any certification link to learn more about the certification criteria, who runs the program, whether it is third party or industry sponsored, why Pharos scores them the way we do and where to get more information.

Take action: Now we need to get the new 01350 standard in wide use. Scientific Certification Systems (SCS) is the first certifier to confirm they are adding the new 01350 residential standard and the stricter formaldehyde standard to their Indoor Advantage Gold program. They expect to announce the first products that have passed the new standards in the next few weeks.

Other programs such as FloorScore, GreenLabel Plus, and Greenguard Children and Schools, however, are taking a wait-and-see attitude, watching for market demand. This is where Pharos users come in. Your inquiries to your sales reps asking for products that meet the new 01350 residential standard will help create the buzz that pushes the manufacturers and the certifiers to get on board. Insist on products that meet the new residential standard and the new formaldehyde standard, regardless of building type.

VOCs aren’t enough: While all the attention has been on VOCs, other not-so-volatile chemicals, that are equally harmful to health, can migrate out of building materials and into you through contact, dust, your food or other pathways. That’s why Pharos has an “IAQ & other Toxic User Exposure” wedge that scores by combining VOC data with information about the toxicity of other product contents. We’ll be talking more about halogenated flame retardants and other toxics in products in the coming weeks.

You can rely on Pharos to continue working to give you the most complete picture of chemical toxicity in building materials and refine our system to make it easier for you to use this information in your work. We look forward to your feedback on these new tools.

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ANOTHER WALL COMES DOWN: EPA’S OPEN ACCESS TOXICITY DATABASE

 

Over the past six months, we’ve begun to see a new EPA – one that supports transparency and access to information about chemicals. We’re moving away from broad protections for industry non-disclosure, formerly protected by confidential business information (CBI) rules. Advocates and consumers can look to EPA to begin to take action on some of the worst-in-class chemicals that can affect human health (including many found in building materials). And just yesterday, the EPA provided open access to its toxicity database, providing a new vehicle for researchers and industry leaders, and ready access to scientific studies about chemicals.

The open access database isn’t for everyone. The information in the database is highly technical and scientific. It will help those of us at Pharos obtain up-to-date scientific information about chemicals and materials, making it easier for us to undertake our research into products’ material contents. It will help green business leaders who hope to make products that are healthier for humans, by giving them access to known research into alternative chemicals and materials.

But most importantly, it sends a signal that this government values transparency and access to information – information that, for too long, has been buried behind a wall.

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SPRAYED POLYURETHANE FOAMS: AN EXPLOSIVE ISSUE

 

“On a Saturday afternoon this past May, while pumping a two-part ‘GREEN’ soy-based foam into the attic ceiling of a Cape Cod home renovation, a fireball erupted, taking the hose man’s life.”

So begins a harrowing account by health and safety consultant Richard Hughes, in which he explores how a polyurethane spray foam applicator in Falmouth, Massachusetts, died on the job last year.

Sprayed polyurethane foams (SPF), especially those that contain soy-based polyols, are commonly called “green” building materials. Some people like its ability to tightly seal hard-to-access areas; others recite industry literature that trumpets the use of bio-based ingredients (soy) in the chemistry and the absence of free formaldehyde in the product.

There are multiple variations on ingredients used in SPF, but the key ones are the same. These are two part systems. One part is an isocyanate. The other part is a mix of polyols, flame-retardants, blowing agents, and other additives. Foam insulation installers follow the same basic steps that occur in industrial polyurethane factories, but in a far more confined space, combining Parts A and B in peoples’ attics.

Before the foams arrive on the job site, there are upstream hazardous associations, including reactions with formaldehyde and chlorine. Like PVC, polyurethane uses significant quantities of chlorinated compounds in its manufacture leading to emissions of dioxins and furans. These persistent, bioaccumulative toxicants are highly potent carcinogens and endocrine disruptors.

The production of methylene diphenyl diisocyanate (MDI), the most prevalent isocyanate used in SPF, requires a whole host of chemicals at various stages, including toluene, benzene, nitrobenzene, aniline, formaldehyde, methylene dianiline (MDA), and phosgene (produced from carbon monoxide and chlorine).

SPF installers combine the isocyanate (Part A) with a mixture of polyols, additives and catalysts (Part B).

Polyols are made from adipic acid, variously with ethylene glycol, propylene oxide or other chemicals. Sometimes the polyols are produced with soy, but this accounts for less than 10 percent of the final polyurethane product.

Additives include surfactants, blowing agents, and flame-retardants, some of which are known to contribute significantly to global warming and ozone depletion. (See box below for examples). Catalysts, which trigger the two-part reaction, can include problematic heavy metals. A common catalyst is lead naphthenate.

Federal agencies are starting to look much more closely at SPF. OSHA, the Consumer Products Safety Council, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, and National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH), have formed a Federal SPF Workgroup. The group aims to:

• “Improve availability of accurate and comprehensive hazard and risk information.” At a December 2009 Federal SPF Workgroup webinar, EPA official Mary Cushmac warned that do-it-yourself applicators are using two-component kits and “are often unaware of the hazards and the need to prevent skin, eye and inhalation exposures.” She raised a question that, disturbingly, remains unanswered: “When can occupants, residents, and school children safely re-enter the premises after SPF application?” The agencies said fundamental guidance is needed for "ventilation, exposure controls, clean-up, and re-entry time.”
• “Address inaccurate or misleading marketing claims.” The federal workgroup listed such claims as “No off-gassing”, “non-toxic”, “safe”, “green”, “environmentally friendly,” “is plant-based”, and “made from soy beans.” A slide warns that the Federal Trade Commission “prohibits deceptive representation in advertising, labeling... and sales presentations.”
• “Address exposure assessment and data gaps.” Janet Carter, an OSHA scientist, noted, “Only a few Material Safety Data Sheets mention the possible need for respiratory protection for ‘adjacent workers’… and do not mention the possible presence of MDI.”

“Worker exposures (are) not always considered in developing ‘green’ products and practices,” charged NIOSH scientist, Dr. Daniel Almaguer. “A truly comprehensive approach to sustainability and green practices needs to include occupational safety and health aspects.”

Drawing a lesson from the explosion on Cape Cod, Richard Hughes concludes, “Chemicals in the residential construction world are a far larger source for concern than we are presently acknowledging in manufacturers, distributors and our own independent safety literature.”

Even less understood than occupational hazards are long-term user exposures from chemicals released into the household from the spray application process, and from the installed foam.

The Pharos Project database now evaluates several SPF insulation products. We are adding more each week. Please sign up to take a comprehensive look at the volatile chemical mixtures that insulation applicators handle as they manufacture polyurethane, attic by attic.

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TOXIC DRYWALL: SENIOR RESEARCHER JIM VALLETTE FEATURED ON EARTHBEAT RADIO

 

Pharos Project Senior Researcher Jim Vallette appeared on this week's edition of Earthbeat Radio to talk about his research into the toxic drywall crisis in Louisiana. The podcast is now available at Earthbeat's website.

www.earthbeatradio.org/home/

A great primer on what drywall is, how it is made, and the issues that have arisen in the last year and as a result of our research.

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PHAROS TODAY, TSCA REFORM TOMORROW

 

While many consumers are increasingly worried about the safety of products from baby bottles to building materials, most are unaware that only a few hundred of the approximately 80,000 chemicals in commerce have been tested for safety.

With the declaration that "America's system for regulating industrial chemicals is broken," Sen. Frank Lautenberg (D-NJ) introduced a bill today that would represent a sea change in the way chemicals are tested and managed.

If passed, the “Safe Chemicals Act” represents the first revision of the Toxic Substances Control Act since its passage more than three decades ago. Under the bill, U.S. EPA would be given broad new authorities to target chemicals of concern and to regulate new and existing chemicals.

While the “Safe Chemicals Act” has only been introduced, and passage in its current form will require it to weather a steady assault from chemical industry lobbyists; it is clear that things are going to change. On that much, environmental health advocates and chemical industry executives agree.

Both understand that no one is served by the current system that engenders consumer distrust and market uncertainty when, for example, a builder finds out that the LEED platinum building he finished yesterday is loaded with tomorrow’s hormone-disrupting chemical of concern.

Within this atmosphere of uncertainty, and grounded only in the knowledge that things are about to change, the need for the Pharos Project is even more apparent. Builders and architects may not be able to predict the future, but they can access the best information available today, including thousands of commonly-used chemicals referenced against dozens of authoritative lists compiled by national and international expert bodies. In fact, much of the same science and data that will be used to craft the next generation of chemicals regulations is already organized within the Pharos database. The EPA’s Chemicals of Concern are included and can be filtered to find building products that don’t contain them.

Obviously, the Pharos Project isn’t a crystal ball, but users will feel a lot better knowing they are not making their decisions based on a regulation that is rooted in the past.

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BLUE VINYL, GREEN VINYL ? . . . NICE VINYL, MEAN VINYL

 

By all accounts my debate on Tuesday night with the Vinyl Institute at the New Jersey Green Building Council was deemed a successful event for all who attended. The Vinyl Industry reps are good at what they do, and they were getting to speak first. I expected them to come out swinging, so I came prepared with Dr. Joe Thornton’s comprehensive analysis of every study the Vinyl Institute usually cites in their presentations (starting at p. 15).

But, they surprised me with a rope-a-dope strategy. Time and again, they portrayed the multi-billion-dollar global vinyl industry as the underdog! I suppose the industry is sort of on-the-ropes given the beating they’ve taken recently: you can’t make flexible vinyl without the chemicals known as phthalates, which EPA declared a “chemical of concern” last December. A new study released this month links dioxin exposure to infertility, and the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights of the Organization of American States accepted a case filed on behalf of people living near vinyl manufacturing facilities in Mossville, Louisiana alleging that their condition constitutes a violation of their human rights.

We did find some areas of agreement that I think surprised a few people. For example, we both agreed vinyl workers do a good job and deserve good jobs in the future. I digressed slightly wondering what ever happened to the good aluminum workers, who lost their well-paying jobs when vinyl displaced things like aluminum siding. But my larger point was this: by signaling now that vinyl is not a green material, we have plenty of time to transition our manufacturing base so that those jobs can be converted to green chemistry jobs. In fact, I noted, that’s exactly what Forbo’s Sustain Brochure does in acknowledging that Forbo's own vinyl floorings do not have a future in a truly sustainable building industry as "the true environmental and health concerns about plasticized-PVC continue to penetrate the market."

Of course, on many points we just couldn’t agree. Having slept on it, I still can’t see how a vinyl manufacturing facility is a “closed-loop operation,” a phrase the Vinyl Institute repeated more than once, when just one facility released nearly 100,000 pounds of toxics in 2008, and nearly half of that was the human carcinogen vinyl chloride.

Many, many folks – including product representatives from vinyl manufacturers – complimented the panel after the event, expressing the belief that the exchange of information and views is the life blood of the green building movement. I agree. So if you would like to bring the great vinyl debate to your firm or USGBC chapter, please contact my co-panelists Allen Blakey or Judith Nordgren to set something up. You can count on me to be there.

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FIBER FACE OFF – PHAROS COMPARES FIBERGLASS AND CELLULOSE INSULATION

 

Many insulation products do their thermal magic by weaving fibers together to create a multitude of tiny insulating air pockets akin to those in a sweater. A wide range of fibers are now used to create this heat trapping phenomenon. In recent weeks, the Pharos team has added more loose-fill and blown-in insulations to the batts previously displayed. In coming weeks, we’ll add sprayed insulations.

How do the fibers stack up in Pharos? This week we look at the two major players: fiberglass and cellulose. While their R-values per inch are fairly equivalent, recycled content varies widely between the fibers, and formaldehyde and other IAQ questions remain:

Fiberglass has been the standard for blanket batts and is also used in some board, loose-fill/blown and sprayed products. Recycled content is now common in fiberglass product, though mostly in the 20 to 30% range, keeping Pharos scores for Renewable Materials in the 2s and 3s. Anco’s TextraFine is an exception with very high recycled content of 85% - although being primarily post-industrial waste, it only gains the product a one-point bump in the Renewable Materials score to 4.

Most of the major fiberglass brands have received a certification for VOC emissions testing, but concerns identified by HBN research about carcinogenic formaldehyde emitted from the binders used in batt blankets keep them from scoring more than a 5 in Pharos for IAQ. There is encouraging movement toward alternative formaldehyde-free batt binders, but manufacturers are not disclosing what they are using instead. We’ll talk more about that in a future blog.

The loose-fill/blown fiberglass products do not use formaldehyde binders that cause such trouble in the batts. They do, however, face the same scoring limit, often due to a lack of manufacturer disclosure about the additives they use to lubricate and lower dust in the blowing process. We do know that some manufacturers use carcinogenic, heavy paraffinic petroleum distillates for these additives, but don’t have information about the extent of any exposure issues for occupants to these chemicals.

Cellulose has been the biggest player in the loosefill/blown-in market and is also used for sprayed products. As a group, cellulose products are the best scoring in Renewable Materials, with high post-consumer, recycled paper content driving scores up to anywhere from 6 to 8 – the highest Renewable Materials scores we’ve seen in Pharos to date.

IAQ evaluation of cellulose products is uncertain. With no formaldehyde binders to generate controversy, the cellulose industry has not felt any pressure to get VOC testing and so has no IAQ scores. The basic loose-fill and blown products tend to be pretty simple and we don’t expect significant VOC problems with them. However, as the stabilized and sprayed products add adhesives with some problematic components, we’d sure like to see some testing to find out what comes off as they cure.

You can use the Pharos Building Product Library sort function to bring up the top performers in any impact category. For example when viewing the Thermal insulation search results you can click on the RnMTL sort button at the top of the Renewable Materials score column to bring the products scoring highest for renewable material content to the top of the list. You’ll see the celluloses all rise above the fiberglass products.

Fiberglass and cellulose are being challenged by a range of new fibers, including both bio-based and new petro plastics. In a future blog, we’ll look at these alternative fibers as well as the move to formaldehyde-free binders. Stay tuned.

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TOXIC TRADE 2010: DRYWALL

 

A couple decades ago, I helped to organize a campaign to stop the export of hazardous waste from the industrialized North to the rest of the world. Ultimately, our work resulted in a ban on many forms of such toxic trade.

It is shocking to see the same tricks that waste traders played on impoverished communities being reenacted in my home country.

Back then, companies labeled toxic ash as “construction materials” and “fertilizer,” and dumped the waste from the shores of Haiti to the fields of Bangladesh. More recently, a suit filed by Louisiana Attorney General James D. “Buddy” Caldwell asserts corporate predators rushed in after Hurricanes Katrina and Rita and dumped Chinese fly ash -- in the form of wallboards used to repair storm-ravaged homes.

The State of Louisiana’s suit names 23 defendants. Chief among them: Knauf International, the Germany-based building material giant. Knauf operates three wallboard plants in China that were the main sources of drywall imported into Gulf Coast states in 2006 and 2007.

"Seeking to profit from the desperation of Louisianans harmed by Hurricanes Katrina and Rita, Knauf (USA) urged Interior Exterior [a local distributor] to purchase Chinese drywall from Knauf," the complaint states.

The Attorney General alleges specific actions by Knauf and a related major building material corporation, United States Gypsum (USG), to push toxic drywall from China into the U.S. marketplace. This complaint also describes the role of a Chinese government-run company, Beijing New Building Materials, which is the third largest wallboard company in the world.

But it is clear that a lot of responsibility lies within Western transnational corporate offices. At least 78 percent of the drywall imported from China in 2006 came from Knauf’s China operations, according to US Customs data.

The complaint states that Knauf’s international offices “exercised strict control” over the three plants in China, and coordinated shipments of the wallboard into the U.S. The shipments were imported by USG, in which Knauf “also held a substantial equity interest.

“In pursuit of profit, Defendants proactively pushed their defective Chinese drywall into Louisiana in massive quantities, knowing that domestic supplies were very low and that Louisiana desperately needed drywall to commence its rebuilding efforts. Defendants’ drywall is and was inherently defective and not suitable for its intended use. It is and was defective, noxious, and toxic, and will remain so for a long but unknown span of years.”

The AG alleges that under Knauf’s control, the Chinese wallboard plants produced drywall made with fly ash, from coal-fired power plants – a material which is not used in wallboard manufactured in North America. This is a much different chemical composition than Flue Gas Desulphurization waste, also called synthetic gypsum, which is a common substitute for natural (mined) gypsum in drywall.

“[T]he Defendants knew or should have known that their use of substandard materials and their shoddy manufacturing and inadequate or non-existent quality-control processes would result in defective, noxious, and toxic drywall which emits a variety of dangerous chemicals,” alleges the AG, including formaldehyde, hydrogen sulfide and carbonyl sulfide.

The AG’s complaint also notes the presence of naphthalene sulfonate additives, which I discussed in last week’s Signal. “Drywall may consist of two other materials with sulfur content: alkyl ethoxy sulfates as foaming agents, and lignin or naphthalene sulfonates as dispersing agents,” it states.

For their parts, Knauf’s U.S. operations, and US Gypsum, have tried to distance themselves from this scandal.

Last March, Knauf Insulation North America issued an Orwellian press release, saying that it needed to “set the record straight.” Knauf Insulation North America President Bob Claxton noted the spate of news reports about drywall used in Florida. “Unfortunately, many of the reports identify ‘Knauf’ rather than Knauf Plasterboard Tianjin as one of the sources of the products imported from China. This has led to confusion in the marketplace… Knauf Insulation is a business unit that operates independently from any other Knauf business, including Knauf Plasterboard Tianjin. Knauf Insulation in North America and our products are not associated with the drywall in question.”

However, Knauf Insulation GmbH and Knauf (USA) are now defendants in the State of Louisiana suit.

While these transnational corporations deny responsibility, they are leaving thousands of homeowners to deal with the health impacts and the huge costs of remediation. The Consumer Products Safety Commission last week advised that “consumers remove all possible problem drywall from their homes, and replace electrical components and wiring, gas service piping, fire suppression sprinkler systems, smoke alarms and carbon monoxide alarms. Taking these steps should help eliminate both the source of the problem drywall and corrosion-damaged components that might cause a safety problem in the home.”

The scourge of hurricanes in the mid-2000s presaged a secondary disaster created by man, not nature. From toxic trailers, to toxic drywall, Gulf Coast residents have borne the brunt of commerce’s basest instincts.

As AG Caldwell’s complaint says, “those rebuilt homes are essentially worthless and uninhabitable unless they are remediated again.... the Defendants have been unjustly enriched."  And, the homeowners have been unjustly sickened.  Over 3,000 people have complained of health impacts ranging from asthma attacks to heart disease.

Our Pharos building materials evaluation system now includes drywall made in China. We hope this information will help users understand the unique hazards posed by these industrial waste byproducts.

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EPA ADDS TO YOUR RIGHT TO KNOW WHAT’S COMING FROM THAT SMOKESTACK

 

US EPA proposed today to add 16 chemicals to the Toxic Release Inventory list which identifies the chemicals that companies must report if they send them up their smokestacks, out their sewage lines or into landfills – the first such addition in over a decade. The 16 are chemicals that have been classified as “reasonably anticipated to be a human carcinogen” by the National Toxicology Program (NTP) in their Report on Carcinogens (RoC), including several that are persistent, bioaccumulative, toxic (PBT) chemicals, and hence are likely to remain in the environment for a very long time, are not readily destroyed, and may build up or accumulate in the body.

It includes chemicals used in building materials such as 2,2-bis(Bromomethyl)-1,3-propanediol, a chemical you probably have never heard of but may soon again in Pharos since it is used as a flame retardant for epoxy, polyester, & urethane foams.

Coming after EPA’s recent decisions to identify chemicals of concern – adding BPA just last week - and to stop letting manufacturers hide chemicals with bad health studies under confidential business information rules, we are starting to see a building pattern of the Agency favoring transparency. Comment on the new rule are open for 60 days.

We like what we see.

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FORMALDEHYDE ADDITIVES IN US-MADE DRYWALL

 

The more The Pharos Team researches building materials, the more we understand how much of the built environment emits formaldehyde. Sources like insulation, laminates, and particleboard are well documented. But, few people realize that another potential source is one of the most prevalent building materials used in the United States: wallboards, also known as drywall, gypsum board or plaster board.

Last fall, drywall hit the news with mounting concerns about the health impacts of high levels of sulfur emissions from Chinese drywall (and some made in the United States) and its potential harmful synergies with formaldehyde in newly built homes. However, as the Consumer Products Safety Commission (CPSC) and US EPA officials studied this potentially toxic combination, their focus was on formaldehyde emissions from other building materials.

EPA official Jim Woolford said, “The drywall is not a source, as far as we can determine, of the formaldehyde. Formaldehyde comes from pressed wood product, laminates and certain adhesives and other items like that.”

The ever-helpful Formaldehyde Council posted a blog article that same month titled “Drywall: Not Made with Formaldehyde-Based Resins.” The Council followed that assertion with a press statement. “Formaldehyde is not associated with corrosion and is not a component of dry wall,” said Executive Director Betsy Natz.

Unfortunately, the EPA and Formaldehyde Council are overlooking studies by the State of California and the EPA itself that demonstrate the inconvenient truth that formaldehyde is coming from the drywall itself. US EPA testing in 2009 detected formaldehyde in the core material of boards made by U.S. manufacturers. Testing by the State of California in 2003 found that both of the standard gypsum boards they sampled emitted more formaldehyde than allowed under the Section 01350 testing protocol for offices.

These findings should not be a surprise to industry and the government investigators. Formaldehyde often is used in wallboard, as part of plasticizer formulations used as dispersants in gypsum slurry production. These dispersing agents are called sulfonated naphthalene-formaldehyde condensates. As the term implies, these formulations involve a combination of formaldehyde and naphthalene chemistry. (Naphthalene is an EPA-listed persistent bioaccumulative toxicant, and an OSHA-listed carcinogen.)

As a 2003 Lyondell Chemical Company presentation on gypsum wallboard dispersants makes clear, “[N]aphthalene sulfonate formaldehyde and sodium lignosulfonate are grades commonly used commercially for wallboard production.”

An annual report by GEO Specialty Chemicals states, “GEO’s napthalane sulfonate condensates… are used to shorten the drying time and expedite the manufacture of plaster board…. Major customers include the four leading plaster board producers: United States Gypsum Company, Georgia-Pacific Corporation, National Gypsum and James Hardie.” [1]

GEO manufactures a dispersing agent called DAXAD that is mainly comprised of naphthalene sulfonic acid, formaldehyde, sodium salt copolymer (CAS No. 9084-06-4). DAXAD condensates are “used to disperse finely divided insoluble particles in water (and) are used (in) gypsum wallboard.

Wallboard production facilities, in turn, have reported formaldehyde emissions. National Gypsum, for example, reported formaldehyde releases at its facilities in Wilmington, North Carolina, (59 pounds in 2005), and Waukegan, Illinois (24.17 pounds in 2003)

So, dear Formaldehyde Council, the chemical you promote is a component of standard, US-made wallboards. We hope that public officials and investigators will factor this information into the on-going investigations of health hazards posed by wallboards, whether made in China, or here in the United States.

In order to help our users understand the frequent presence of naphthalene sulfonate formaldehyde and other additives in wallboard, the Pharos library of wallboard evaluations lists these as common ingredients. Further references are found in our record for Common Drywall Ingredients. We look forward to further clarification from manufacturers about whether additives to their products do, in fact, include formaldehyde chemistry.

[1] GEO Specialty Chemicals Annual Report (Form 10-K), filed April 15, 2003.

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CELLULOSE INSULATIONS RECEIVE PHAROS PROJECT’S FIRST ‘8’ FOR RENEWABLE CONTENT

 

In the coming weeks, the Pharos Project will help you find warm and healthy materials, as we add a wide range of thermal insulation products to the database. Fiber and foam boards, loose-fills and blown-ins, sprayed and foamed-in insulation products will join the batt insulation products previously reviewed in the Pharos Project.

This week, the Pharos team highlights loose-fill and blown-in products. You will find some of the highest scores we’ve seen for renewable content among Pharos Project materials so far. (Click on the RnMTL column header on the Search Results page to bring the best scoring products to the top). This group of products also includes some with relatively good Manufacturing and Community Toxics scores, due to simple, relatively low toxic ingredient contents.

In future weeks, the Pharos team will explore a number of different issues presented by insulation products including:

• the toxicity of the many different binders added to hold stabilized, sprayed and fiber insulations together, including reviewing alternatives that are beginning to replace formaldehyde binders;
• the pros and cons of different mineral fibers and cellulose; and
• the chemistry of various foam products, including some very problematic flame retardant additives.

Finally, we will reveal how much “bio” is actually in the bio-based foam products.

The wide range of materials used in these products leads to some significant scoring spreads between different insulation product types and brands, revealing some distinct differences and tradeoffs. We look forward to your feedback as we explore this territory.

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IF A LITTLE BIT OF SUNSHINE CAN MELT VINYL SIDING, THINK WHAT FULL TRANSPARENCY FOR THE VINYL INDUSTRY COULD DO

 

Last week, Plastics News reported on a phenomenon in which “low-E” or energy efficient windows installed on homes with vinyl siding were actually causing the vinyl to melt when exposed to focused sunlight from the low-E windows.

It is perhaps not that surprising when you consider the fact that the vinyl industry has for the most part left consumers in the dark about the contents and true environmental health impacts of their products. Consider that of the more than ten vinyl flooring manufacturers contacted by the Pharos Project, only one (Lonseal) fully disclosed their product ingredients in the system. The rest either declined to participate altogether or chose to keep information about key chemical ingredients proprietary.

If there was any doubt as to whether the vinyl industry’s reluctance to participate in the Pharos Project was a calculated decision, the Pharos Project received an email on September 17, 2009 from a representative of a leading vinyl manufacturer that set the record straight. Regarding our request that they participate in the Pharos Project they responded:

“The Pharos Project Team has of course made similar requests of other flooring manufacturers and subsequently, this request was discussed at an ‘industry’ level and the decision was then made to not participate at this time based on the categorization of certain materials (namely PVC)."

The vinyl industry’s reticence to come into the light of transparency is easily explained by its track record of serious environmental contamination. This toxic trail starts in communities around chemical manufacturing facilities, continues in the buildings where users are exposed to toxic additives like phthalates, and ends with the dispersal of these contaminants after the product’s useful end of life.

So a little sunshine may not be doing your vinyl siding any good, but it sure would feel wonderful to consumers trying to make the best choice for the planet.

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OUR CLEAR CUT CHOICE

 

I recently received an email asking me to help stop the certified forestry practices pictured to the right.[1] An investigative report by a local television station documented that among other things, few members of the certifying body had visited the site, and “none of them had any forestry education.” Asked on camera: “How is this protecting the forest,” a professional forester replies: “It’s not.” Here’s the catch – they are talking about the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC).

Incidents like these appear to lend credence to the view that the USGBC should stop “quibbling over the relative merits” and recognize multiple forest certification systems.[2] So why is the Healthy Building Network urging you to join a call to action and support the groups that are defending the FSC credit in LEED?

Because we agree with the Sierra Club’s position on the FSC:

• Currently, the FSC is the only credible forest certification system...
• Competing schemes lack the stringency and the checks and balances-and hence the credibility of the FSC.
• As supporters of FSC, the FSC and its certifiers need to be held accountable to ensure that the promise of credible forest certification is fulfilled. The FSC itself is not perfect and from time to time Club activists have challenged specific certifications performed by FSC-accredited certifiers.

One of the most maddening things about the 4-year assault on LEED’s FSC credit by the timber industry’s old guard is that so many voices of accountability have been muted out of fear that any criticism of FSC at this point will erode confidence in an organization under siege, and result in a lower standard. By adopting the playbook of cigarette science and the climate skeptics, the big timber companies have manufactured a specious controversy: will systems they created and dominate theoretically produce healthier forests than the independent, multi-stakeholder FSC process?[3] No. Virtually all organizations dedicated to preserving forest ecosystems agree – as do many forest products companies -- that the USGBC should only amend its LEED credit to be “FSC or Better.” The USGBC proposals have not yet met that standard.

There is now an excellent portal to reliable sources of information about forest certification and the extensive record of debate in the USGBC. A new in-depth series in an online news journal from British Columbia offers a succinct narrative of the history of the FSC, SFI and the debate within LEED. Let this history guide you through current events, and as the Watergate-era saying goes, follow the money.

Since its founding in 1993, the FSC has received core financial support from philanthropies like the Ford Foundation. Many forest products companies do participate in the FSC and believe its governance structure offers them ample opportunity to get a fair shake.

The largest North American companies with some of the worst logging practices resisted the FSC from the beginning, and within a year created the SFI, housed from 1994-2000 in their trade association, the American Forest and Paper Products Association (AFPA). Not surprisingly, this organized resistance has created the false scarcity of FSC-certified timber from North America, which is the basis of their top argument against the current LEED credit – that it “discriminates against North American forests.”[4]

The SFI and FSC do agree on one important fact. According to a March 1, 2010 statement by the SFI: "If the USGBC maintains the status quo and does not recognize the SFI Standard, many LEED builders who chase points will turn… to FSC wood."[5] That is exactly what we need to happen so that we all can turn our attention back to the real question: is the certification process improving the state of imperiled forest ecosystems?

Support of the USGBC membership is critical to this effort. Brendan Owens, vice-president for technical development at the USGBC has noted: "We are a membership-driven organization. If the USGBC membership says, 'This is the way we want USGBC to be,' then that is the way USGBC is going to be.”[6]

Please take a moment to read this important action alert. There, you also will find information about the latest USGBC proposal, and critically, the USGBC balloting process, which requires that interested USGBC members affirmatively “opt-in” to the “consensus body” if they wish to vote on the final recommendations. Please Opt-In Right Now! The opt-in deadline is March 24th.

Footnotes

[1] See, www.maforests.org

[2] See e.g., Howe,Jeff Green Building Blues: Is Wood Getting A Raw Deal?

[3] In May 2006 the USGBC's Board justified these proposals as a "response to the escalating debate over wood and wood certification" in LEED. But One USGBC Board member offered a more candid explanation: "We needed to start the process because, like it or not, AFPA [timber industry trade association] efforts to undermine the adoption of LEED nationally are working and we need to take the 'LEED is anti-wood' arrow out of their quiver."

[4] “SFI’s Statement on the USGBC’s Third Draft Forest Certification Benchmarks

Updated – March 1, 2010”

[5] Ibid.

[6] http://thetyee.ca/News/2010/03/19/GreenForestry/

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MERCURY CONTAMINATION OF DRYWALL

 

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?

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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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SORTING OUT THE VOCS

 

Pharos Project users may have noticed that products that are advertised as no- or low-VOC, are not necessarily rated highly in Pharos. For most interior finish products, Pharos scores a product based on whether it passes a 14-day test for emissions of VOCs* such as FloorScore, GreenGuard or Indoor Advantage. The system then deducts points for content of chemicals of concern that are flagged in the Pharos Chemical and Material Library. This addresses the non-volatile, toxic chemicals that occupants are exposed to, but the VOC tests don’t measure. Pharos puts a higher weight on the most hazardous of the VOC chemicals.

Pharos evaluates wet applied products, such as the recently-added high performance coatings (including paints, caulks and adhesives) a bit differently; starting with a score based upon the content of VOCs instead of emissions tests. Some of the VOC emission testing programs do certify these products, but these wet products act differently from carpets and particle board, releasing a big blast of hazardous VOCs during the first hours and days of use that these long-term emissions tests aren’t able to tell us much about. At this point, there is lots of disagreement in the emissions lab world about how best to measure and evaluate these short-term VOC releases from wet products.

While the emissions world is working on this problem, Pharos is using the VOC content (sometimes called TVOC for total VOC) to compare products.

Several issues make TVOC a less than perfect protection for human health:

• The TVOC measure takes different chemical compounds, some of which may be much more potent than others, and combines them into one measure without differentiation.  Pharos addresses this by requiring total avoidance of VOCs to reach the upper levels and deducting points for VOC content that is red-flagged, as a material of very high concern.
• The EPA and some other governmental agencies regulate VOC content to address outdoor smog formation, not indoor air quality. As a result, most manufacturers only report the VOCs that are reactive in the atmosphere and contribute to smog, ignoring those exempted from the EPA smog regulations, but that may still be toxic, such as methylene chloride, a probable carcinogen. Pharos gives higher scores to products which have zero VOCs including exempt compounds (like the Eco-Tuff line of coatings) over others that only claim zero EPA-regulated VOC content.
• VOC content does not reveal VOCs which may be created by chemical reactions during the curing process, such as methanol or formaldehyde. To reach the highest levels in Pharos, a product needs to have both zero VOC content to protect the user against the early short-term releases and pass a VOC emissions test to insure against the creation of VOCs during longer-term curing. No listed HPCs have done this yet.
• Occupants are exposed to other non-volatile contents that may be just as toxic as the VOCs, but are not included in either TVOC content or emissions testing. Pharos deducts points to address these low- or non-volatile, but still toxic, chemicals such as the nonyl-phenols found in many of the epoxies.

Pharos staff continues to support efforts to develop improved measures to evaluate both content and short-term emissions of VOCs, and will apply more advanced measures as they are developed.

*VOCs are the Volatile Organic Compounds that outgas from materials after they are made – creating that new carpet smell and releasing toxic gases into your air.

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NO, NO, NONYL(PHENOL)

 

Over the past half-century, epoxy paint manufacturers have used a chemical called nonylphenol to harden their products. In the built environment, the use of nonylphenol and nonylphenol ethoxylates (NPEs) is contributing to rising indoor exposures to endocrine disruptors (chemicals that affect the hormone system). (1) In aquatic ecosystems, NPEs degrade back to nonylphenol. NP bioaccumulates up the food chain and is highly toxic to fish and shellfish. (2)

In Europe, regulators and industry have taken action to eliminate NP and NPEs from consumer products. The OSPAR Commission, which governs toxic discharges into the northeast Atlantic Ocean, includes NP and NPEs on its list of 42 chemicals for priority action, due to their endocrine disruption, bioaccumulation, and toxicological characteristics. (3) The European Commission has declared that all discharges of NP “to all water bodies should be stopped by 2015.” (4)

Danish and Swedish Governments and industries have moved aggressively to stop the use of NP and NPEs in consumer products over the past two decades. “The use of NPE is almost completely phased out in Denmark,” reports Miljøstyrelsen, the country’s environment ministry. “The Danish market for paints and lacquers is almost exclusively served by Danish producers and importers that according to voluntary agreements have refrained from using NPE as an additive since the mid-1990s.” (5)

But in the U.S., action has been slow. In 2007, a hotel workers’ union, a commercial fishing association, and environmental organizations petitioned the U.S. EPA to ban NPEs in detergents. (6) After initially denying this petition, a court mediation process led the EPA to announce in 2009 it would explore developing an aquatic and sedimentary testing program. New rules will not be drafted until late 2011.

Nonylphenols released from detergents pose a direct threat to the aquatic environment, and it is great to see this action. But these toxicants also threaten human health through indoor exposures from coatings and paints. This reality remains unchallenged in the U.S. market. Coating companies routinely use NP as a hardening agent, sometimes as a direct additive, and sometimes as a monomer in NPE polymers.

This week, the Pharos Project released its third batch of High Performance Coating (HPC) product evaluations. These include several epoxies that explicitly list NP and NPEs in their material safety data sheets. Almost all of the HPCs that we have evaluated provide only partial ingredient listings. Based upon standard industry practice and the precautionary principle, whenever an HPC epoxy product does not fully disclose its ingredients, we include nonylphenol in the Pharos evaluation.

If specifiers want to avoid using endocrine disruptors and bioaccumulative toxicants in their buildings, they should take a close look at our epoxy coating evaluations. Not only are NP and NPEs ubiquitous in these products, so too are the suspected endocrine disruptors, bisphenol A and epichlorohydrin.

Later this month, the Pharos blog, The Signal, will compare the hazards of epoxy coatings with the manufacturing and use toxicities of other types of HPC: acrylic, polyurethane, and alkyds. No HPC on the market is close to an ideal ecological performer, but as our evaluations reveal, some types are demonstrably more hazardous than others.

Footnotes

(1) Charles J. Weschler, “Changes in indoor pollutants since the 1950s,” Atmospheric Environment 43 (2009) 153–169

(2) Study on Hazardous Substances in Electrical and Electronic Equipment, Not Regulated by the RoHS Directive, Öko-Institut e.V., April 28, 2008

(3) “Nonylphenol/Nonylphenolethoxylates,” Hazardous Substances Series, OSPAR Commission 2001 (2004 Update), available at: http://www.ospar.org/documents/dbase/publications/p00136_BD%20on%20nonylphenol.pdf

(4) Reference Document on Best Available Techniques in the Production of Polymers, European Commission, August 2007, p. 125

(5) “Assessment of nonylphenol,” in Possible Control of EU Priority Substances in Danish Waters, Environmental Project No. 1182, 2007, available at: http://www2.mst.dk/Udgiv/publications/2007/978-87-7052-566-4/html/kap09_eng.htm

(6) “Groups Demand EPA Action on Gender-Bending Chemicals,” Sierra Club press release, June 5, 2007, available at: http://www.sierraclub.org/pressroom/releases/pr2007-06-05.asp

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THE PHAROS PROJECT: APPLIED RADICAL TRANSPARENCY

 

The Pharos Project, at its core, is a campaign for transparency in the building materials market. What we are creating is the ultimate campaign tool: a tool for users to locate the best materials to meet their current needs and enduring values; a tool to help cut through the prolific greenwashing; a space where users can discuss what makes a product truly green; and, most importantly, a platform from which to show manufacturers what constitutes a market in support of the best environmental, health and social equity practices.

Ensuring users have access to the “how and why” of a Pharos Project score is the cornerstone of our system. We don’t resort to the thumbs up or thumbs down methodology of the first generation of certifications and labels that often left us wondering if existing eco-labels were reliable, consensus-based certifications or, instead, industry-sponsored greenwash.

Part of the challenge is to present the information we have gathered about products in an intuitive, yet credible, way that is completely transparent. Therefore, we have boiled each of our impact categories down to: an ideal (the ultimate material), a goal (what can realistically be achieved in the near future), the problem (what needs to be avoided in the current situation). We score each product against four impact categories and create a 1-10 color-coded score based on benchmarks that plot progress toward that category’s ideal. It’s both simple to read and easy to compare products.

We recognize that transparency mandates that we release all of the data we use to create these scores. So, we do. When visiting a Pharos product profile, simply click on any of the impact category scores in the upper right hand corner (the grey, black or colored boxes with numbers inside of them) and you will be linked to what is behind the score: the scoring methodology, the product data, and the documentation, meticulously sourced and verified. We understand that not everyone wants that level of detail, but the need for transparency demands it, and we are happy to lead by example.

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TO PAINT OR PROCREATE – THAT IS THE QUESTION

 

Bisphenol A (BPA) is the notorious chemical that water bottle manufacturers like Nalgene and SIGG have had to phase out because it leaches into liquids. The science is strong that BPA can affect the hormone and reproductive system. Yet, time and again when regulators or legislators try to propose legislation or establish regulations to limit the use of BPA in some products, the cry from industry is that there is little to no scientific evidence that BPA is harming humans. (Most of the scientific evidence comes from animal studies.) The one area in the scientific literature that does show the negative human effects of BPA on the reproductive system is when workers are exposed regularly to epoxy-based resin spray paint – the very types of products that HBN has recently evaluated for our new product category: High Performance Coatings.

Not many people realize that BPA is fundamental to epoxy-based resins used for high performance coatings and building adhesives (including carpet and flooring). In most cases, epoxy paints and adhesives are made from resins made from BPA. In the limited studies of workers’ regular exposure to epoxy spray paints, the epoxy resin is getting in the their bodies (through inhalation? skin contact?) and breaking down in their bodies to BPA. The reproductive systems of some of those men are showing that BPA is disrupting the secretion of sex hormones. (Click here for more of the science on BPA)

In a recent study funded by the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) and implemented by researchers from Kaiser Permanente, workers in a BPA manufacturing facility in China were compared to workers in a Chinese facility that did not use BPA. The study found that, “the workers in the BPA facilities had quadruple the risk of erectile dysfunction, and seven times more risk of ejaculation difficulty."

Perhaps people agree with the chemical industry – BPA is safe until proven, without a shadow of a doubt, that it is causing human harm. However, many of us don’t need absolute positive proof to avoid the chemical – if it can potentially affect our bodies and the bodies of our children, why would we want it on our walls, under our feet, or in our food? Perhaps people will use Pharos to look at the many products available on the market and signal to the building industry the desire to purchase products that won’t affect our ability to procreate.

For more background on BPA in high performance coatings, read our fact sheet, “Bisphenol A in Building Materials: High Performance Paint Coatings”.

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PHAROS UNVEILS NEW PRODUCT CATEGORY – HIGH PERFORMANCE COATINGS

 

Today, we introduce a new product category to the Pharos Project, High Performance Coatings (CSI MasterFormat 09 96 00). High Performance Coatings are durable paints, used in places like boiler or mechanical rooms, as well as in food prep areas and operating rooms, where chemicals and liquids abound.

Over the next couple of weeks, we will be displaying the results of HBN-generated research about specific products, scored with a gray score to indicate that the research is preliminary. Simultaneously, we will send out an RFI to each of the product manufacturers, inviting them to engage in the Pharos Project and provide further information to our users. Those manufacturers who do so will obtain solid-colored scores.

As we display more High Performance Coating products, Pharos users will be able to explore different issues associated with the product category and we will be posting new blogs focusing on different aspects of High Performance Coatings.

For now, don’t be surprised by the low scores. One of the many things we learned undertaking this research is that there is a wide range of disclosure among High Performance Coating manufacturers. Some report a long list of chemicals and materials that are included in a product’s ingredients, while others report merely one or two chemicals/materials, sometimes accounting for only 5-10% of what is actually in the product. Not only does this remind us how limited material safety data sheets can be, but hopefully it inspires Pharos users to urge manufacturers to fully disclose the chemicals and other ingredients in their products. In the meantime, we have listed “generic” ingredient mixes for the products drawn from industry norms, which account for the chemicals frequently used in these products where disclosure by the manufacturer was minimal. We invite the manufacturers to tell us what is actually in their products.

Look for more complete coverage of the issues below in coming blog posts, but the bullet points below highlight some of the things we do know about High Performance Coatings:

• Many are made from bisphenol A. People don’t realize that many high performance coatings are made from bisphenol A, one of the chemicals under great scrutiny because of its effect on the hormonal and reproductive system. (The U.S. EPA recently identified it as a chemical of concern)
• It’s not just bisphenol A that is worrisome - High Performance Coatings can include a number of other chemicals of concern, including epichlorohydrin (listed as a carcinogen by the International Agency for Research on Cancer) and nonyl phenyl (an OSPAR Commission listed persistent bio-accumulative toxicant (PBT))
• There is still much controversy about how to measure short-term VOC emissions from wet applied products. As a result, high performance coatings, are currently evaluated on the actual content of VOCs in the product rather than their emissions.

Most of what you will see in these preliminary results focuses on the chemical and material content of the coatings. We expect when manufacturers engage, we will learn more about their use of renewable energy – and some of them may follow the call for transparency and identify more thoroughly what it is that they are using to make their products.

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PHAROS: EVALUATING BEST PRACTICES, NOT BEST INTENTIONS

 

As we populate the Pharos Project with building products and chemicals, we trust our users are becoming empowered with a better map to guide their green building decisions. To see this at work, take a look at one of the new product profiles we added this week. If you don’t have a subscription yet, please, sign up and start digging.

Last week, in what Environmental Building News described as a “surprising development,” MBDC awarded Dow Chemical’s extruded polystyrene insulation a Cradle-to-Cradle (C2C) Silver certification. MBDC also awarded C2C Silver to a little-understood Dow batt insulation called SafeTouch, which we just added to the Pharos system. As EBN explains, designers might interpret C2C Silver Certification to mean that the product is “free of hazards or that it is necessarily a “green product.’”

Dow sheds little light on the chemistry of SafeTouch. The company says what is absent from SafeTouch – “No formaldehyde binders, no acrylic binders, and no borates…” – but little about what is present. The Material Safety Data Sheet (MSDS) for SafeTouch lists three chemicals -- polyethylene terephthalate (PET), polyethylene, and a “trade secret Modified PET polymer.” Here’s what is lacking from the MSDS:

• Binders. For decades, formaldehyde - a carcinogen - has been the standard binder used to glue the fiberglass fibers together in batt insulation. If there is no formaldehyde in SafeTouch, as Dow states, then what is binding the fibers?
• Any idea of what is modifying the PET polymer, such as additives and copolymers. There are a wide variety of possible combinations, like stabilizers and cross-linking agents.
• Any idea of whether flame retardants, another common ingredient in batt insulation, are used in what reads like an otherwise combustible product.

It turns out that Dow holds a patent on a product that strongly resembles SafeTouch. We examined U.S. Patent No. 5,407,739, “Ignition resistant meltbrown or spunbonded insulation material.”

From this patent, the Pharos team drew some preliminary conclusions about what might be accompanying the polyethylene and PET in SafeTouch including chemicals like vinyl acetate and ethyl acrylate (both of which are OSHA-listed carcinogens) and polyvinylidiene chloride. Common feedstocks for producing polyvinylidiene chloride include the Proposition 65-listed carcinogens, vinyl chloride and 1,1,2-trichloroethane.

Users may learn more about these ingredients, their hazards, and the chemicals that make them, in the Pharos Chemical and Material Library. This upstream information should be part of any product assessment, especially since so few chemicals have been studied and so many have been exempted from oversight.

While some certification programs may reward intentions, the Pharos Project evaluates practices.

You may also follow the chemical pathways for two other products the Pharos team released this week. One is a styrene-butadiene-rubber rolled flooring sold by VPI Corporation. Like Dow, VPI has not engaged with the Pharos Project, despite repeated requests from our charter members, but we welcome their participation at any time.

The third product is Textrafine, a GreenGuard Children & Schools-certified batt insulation by Anco Products, which includes a phenol formaldehyde binder. As my colleague Tom Lent has reported, fiberglass insulation using phenol formaldehyde can emit significant levels of formaldehyde, a known carcinogen.

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DECLINED BY NYT. WE STILL THINK WE’VE GOT A POINT.

 

Last week, the NYT ran an editorial on the chemical bisphenol-A (BPA), which in closing advises “wise consumers try to avoid BPA.” HBN’s letter to the editor was declined. Other fine letters were printed – but none making our point: wise consumers must demand full transparency and disclosure of all product ingredients from manufacturers. Here it is in full.

To the Editor:

Your January 21 editorial, “Heightened Concern Over BPA,” advises “wise consumers [to] try to avoid BPA.” How am I supposed to do that?

BPA is never listed as a material ingredient in any product. Moreover, many consumers felt betrayed when they bought water bottles advertised as BPA-free only to find out that was not true.

And, where else is BPA in our lives?

Last July, our researchers identified epoxy resins (found in building materials) and high performance paints as significant sources of BPA exposure. In November, a study by Kaiser Permanente, found that levels of workplace exposure to BPA may increase the risk of reduced sexual function in men.

Product manufacturers know what chemicals are in their products. The rest of us have a right to know. A word to the wise: if you want to avoid chemical risks, demand that manufacturers disclose all chemical ingredients in their products.

William C. Walsh
Executive Director
Healthy Building Network

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ALTERNATIVES TO PVC FLOORING STILL NEED IMPROVEMENT ON THEIR PATH TO SUSTAINABILITY

 

We’ve completed analysis on and released another five products for display in the Pharos Project today. Four of them are batt insulation products. Three are variations of Thermafiber's "slag wool" batt insulation, and the fourth insulation is a Roxul product. We have not previously contacted these manufacturers for their participation, so these data are preliminary, based upon publicly-available data. Products such as these, with no prior engagement with manufacturers, are listed with gray-colored scores. We look forward to working with Thermafiber and Roxul to augment and complete their Pharos evaluations.

The fifth is Stratica, a polyolefin resilient flooring product that has been one of the more popular alternatives for specifiers seeking to avoid PVC vinyl flooring. Amtico, Stratica's manufacturer, has declined to participate in Pharos to date. Their scores are therefore listed with black-colored evaluations. This flooring is likely no stranger to many Pharos subscribers and Heathy Building Network (HBN) followers. HBN’s Resilient Flooring & Chemical Hazards report released last year reviewed vinyl and the major alternatives: synthetic rubber, Stratica and linoleum. The report made clear that PVC continues to earn its worst-in-class reputation due to serious toxic chemical problems throughout its life cycle. Likewise in Pharos, PVC flooring products earn the lowest Manufacturing & Community Toxics scores of the product group.

HBN research revealed, however, that there is still much need for improvement among the major commercial alternatives. For example, while avoiding the phthalate plasticizers that burden vinyl products, Stratica still contains a Prop 65 carcinogen – carbon black – that keeps its User Exposure scores from climbing higher than the best of the vinyls. It also still has many components with red-flagged chemicals in their manufacturing chemistry.

While no ideal “green” material currently exists for flooring options, the HBN report points the way to a range of alternative materials with lesser toxicity hazards than sheet and tile products made with PVC and more potential for improvement. Over the next few months, we will continue to add flooring alternatives to the Pharos database to help you map how they compare and where they are on the path to sustainability

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NEW REPORT: HIGH COSTS TO HEALTH CARE FROM CHEMICAL EXPOSURES

 

Today, the Safer Chemicals, Healthy Families www.saferchemicals.org campaign released a new report, “Health Case for Reforming the Toxic Substances Control Act,” that shows the high costs to our health care system associated with chemical exposure.

Pharos Project subscribers need to read this report. It provides a sobering realization that there is a great deal of peer-reviewed scientific evidence linking chemicals in building products to a number of chronic diseases and illnesses. It is timely as well. Congress is set to begin considering a reform of the more-than-three-decades-old Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA) in an effort to align our chemical policy with 21st century science. It will not be an easy task.

The chemicals highlighted in the report, such as phthalates and formaldehyde, are chemicals used in building products that have been on the radar of scientists for a long time, yet our current regulatory system continues to allow them on the market -- and the building industry continues to spend millions of dollars to produce and use them.

Drawing only from peer-reviewed scientific journals, the report reviews the state of the science for a number of chronic diseases including: certain forms of cancer, developmental disabilities, Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s disease, reduced reproductive health in both men and women, and asthma. The report demonstrates how Americans could improve their health and save money on health care costs by reducing exposures to toxic chemicals.

TSCA reform will take time. However, Pharos subscribers can immediately begin to use the Chemical and Material Library and Building Product Library to access data and determine if any of the reported chemicals are in the products that architects, designers and other building professionals specify daily.

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PRODUCT PATENT INFO RAISES QUESTIONS

 

Today we released five new products for display in the Pharos Project. Unlike the many forward-thinking companies who provided information to the database upon request, these products’ manufacturers declined to participate in Pharos, which forced us to rely upon publicly available information.

Congoleum sells a commercial sheet flooring product with polyvinyl chloride (PVC), called Flor-Ever Plus. Their website description of the product fails to mention the word ‘vinyl’ (you have to dig deep into their commercial literature to see that). And it barely describes any of the other ingredients, including plasticizers and other chemicals in the flooring’s crucial backing material. Congoleum simply calls the backing “White Shield felt.”

A search of patent records uncovered ingredients of Congoleum’s vinyl sheet backing. As Pharos subscribers will see, “White Shield felt” backing is a conglomeration of resin binders (usually styrene-butadiene latex), PET, fillers and antioxidants, which may include Bisphenol-A.

Similarly Armstrong’s website touts the renewable ingredients of its' new Bio-Based Tile (BBT) but offers little more than generalizations about the ingredients of this resilient composition. But it revealed much more in patent applications recently published by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office.

Armstrong's Bio-Based Tile patent contemplates up to 10 percent of recycled content (mainly post-industrial limestone, although post-consumer PET is a possibility) and up to 9 percent biobased material, such as corn and saw dust. Vital particulars about what Armstrong is currently selling, and what they plan to sell in the future, remain unknown. Its' renewable polyester flooring base layer potentially includes epoxies, fly ash, isocyanates, stabilizers, and even recycled urea formaldehyde.

We hope that the information we are sharing on Pharos will empower you, our users, to ask the right questions of these manufacturers. To this end, please have a look at the new products released today, which also include resilient flooring from LG Floors (NatureLife) and American ZBiltrite (Mirra), and CertainTeed’s CertaPro Commercial AcoustaTherm Batt insulation (Not a subscriber yet? Sign up today.).

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EPA’S “CHEMICALS OF CONCERN” IN GREEN BUILDING PRODUCTS

 

On December 30, 2009, the US EPA initiated a process that could result in the regulation of health threats from four classes of chemicals that have been widely used in building materials. This action directs new attention to “green” building product standards that do not adequately account for health impacts, and underscores why transparency must be the cornerstone of future product standards and certifications, and the U.S. Green Building Council’s LEED Rating System.

The classes of chemicals listed by EPA as “chemicals of concern,” include flame retardants, stain and water repellants, and phthalates (90% of which are used as softeners in flexible vinyl products such as floor and wall coverings). They are largely ignored by the certifications most widely used in the green building industry and recognized by LEED. As a result, LEED-rated projects – even LEED Platinum buildings – risk being cited as sources of exposure to EPA-listed “chemicals of concern” including endocrine disruptors and neurotoxins.

No one can say they didn’t see this coming. The USGBC was first informed of the health concerns about phthalates in vinyl building products ten years ago and acknowledged the phthalate hazard in its 2007 Technical and Science Advisory Committee report.1 In 2004, the Environmental Building News called for a ban on chemical flame retardants that could not be proven safe. The Green Guide for Health Care suggests best practices for avoiding persistent and bio-accumulative chemicals such as the flame retardants and stain repellents listed by the EPA last month. HBN’s own newsletter archive contains a backlog of articles on these chemicals dating back to 2002.2

But most green product standards and certifications still lag far behind governmental actions taken in the face of emerging science and mounting evidence of health risks. Efforts to meaningfully address chemical hazards in green standards are slowed or blocked by manufacturer trade associations who are active in, and frequently control, the stakeholder process. As a result, too often green standards and certifications mute rather than broadcast important market signals, such as new chemical regulations at the state level, chemical phase-outs by market leaders, or even EPA’s newly-designated “chemicals of concern.” This undermines the efforts of manufacturers trying to distinguish products that legitimately represent the leading edge of environmental health protection. The manufacturers of less healthy products use green certifications and standards to aid and abet their greenwash campaigns. Consumers are left confused and increasingly cynical when every product seems to have some sort of green label.

Phthalates, the subject of a decade of mounting evidence suggesting environmental and health hazards, and now listed by EPA as “chemicals of concern,” are a classic illustration of this unfairness. When it comes to interior finishes such as flooring, carpeting or wall coverings, a green certification that does not make the easy distinction between products that contain phthalates and those that do not is fostering greenwash, plain and simple.

These will surely not be the last “chemicals of concern” that we find in products labeled “green.” The Pharos Chemical and Material Library lists toxic hazard warnings for thousands of chemicals that are similar to the concerns that led to December’s EPA action. Furthermore, fewer than 5% of the chemicals in use today have been fully tested for human health impacts.

One thing that distinguishes a truly sustainable company is a commitment and ability to get ahead of the emerging science and innovate its products to new levels of environmental and health performance. What’s missing from current green standards and certification systems is the basic transparency that would allow buyers and specifiers to better identify those manufacturers. The threshold requirement for green product standards and certifications must be full disclosure of the product’s ingredients and a precautionary assessment of their hazard based on the weight of available evidence.

Footnotes

[1] Assessment of the Technical Basis for a PVC-Related Materials Credit for LEED, February 2007. See p.14 and p.81 Available at http://www.usgbc.org/DisplayPage.aspx?CMSPageID=1633

[2] See e.g., "New Studies Raise Concerns About PVC Additives" (Summer, 2002); "Montreal, Kyoto now Stockholm: International Treaty Calls for Use of Alternative Materials" (March 22, 2004); "Building As If Breathing Mattered: PVC’s Contributions To Asthma" (August 11, 2004); "Two Independent Critiques of Vinyl Building Materials Link Flooring & Asthma, Reproductive Problems & PVC Combustion" (November 1, 2004); "As Good AS Mother’s Milk: The US Green Building Movement" (January 27, 2005); "New Study Finds Plasticizers a Major Contaminant In Household Dust" (March 22, 2005); "Bad News for Babies: Research Links PVC Plasticizer to Genital Deformities" (June 17, 2005); "PVC Softeners Used In Building Products Cited As Health Concern In Autos" (February 7, 2006); "The 'New Shower Curtain Smell' May Be Toxic To Your Health" ( July 1, 2008); "International Authorities Turn Up the Heat on Toxic Flame Retardants in Building Materials" (November 6, 2008); "Resilient Flooring and Chemical Hazards" (May 21, 2009); "Persistence of PFCs" (July 8, 2009). All are available in our Newsletter Archive. Also, use the search function at www.healthybuilding.net to locate fact sheets and white papers on these chemicals.

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CHILD OBESITY CONTINUES TO CLIMB - CAN WE REVERSE THE TIDE BY CHOOSING SAFER BUILDING MATERIALS?

 

A summary of "The Health and Well-Being of Children: A Portrait of States and the Nation 2007" was released by our government today. In addition to the stark reality that too many of American children continue to lack basic health care coverage, were two findings relevant to our work at Pharos - and just as relevant, to our work as parents:

Nearly one-third of U.S. children, ages 10 to 17, were overweight or obese.

Over 25 percent of American children under age 5 were at risk for developmental and behavioral problems or social delays.

Because of my work researching building products and chemicals for HBN, I've known for quite some time that some studies suggest there is a link between exposure to phthalates (chemicals used in PVC plastic found in flooring and wall coverings) and obesity or insulin resistance in humans.1 And, having worked on children's environmental issues in a previous work life, I am also acutely aware of the fact that some heavy metals (chemicals such as lead used as a stabilizer in PVC products and chromium found in furniture) are linked to neuro-developmental problems in kids.2

But, my children aren't obese and have not exhibited any developmental or behavioral issues (beyond the norm of my 11-year-old who is just entering that ever wondrous stage of puberty!). And yet, the increase in obesity and learning problems concerns me. While the statistics don't represent my immediate family, my kids' peers, the world's future, are represented by those statistics. And I see in my daily work that we as consumers of building products have the power to help reverse the tide and in even the smallest ways, take action to reduce kids' chemical exposures - simply by purchasing safer and healthier building products.

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CLEARING A FLAME RETARDANT SMOKE SCREEN

 

In the process of identifying flame retardants in household dust and sewage sludge, Duke University environmental chemist Heather Stapleton identified four new compounds that raised public and environmental health concerns. Then she ran into a wall of industry secrecy. Many flame retardant manufacturers do not disclose their product's ingredients, so she could not cross-reference her findings with industry data.

Chemical companies routinely claim trade secrecy in matters pertaining to their products. An article in yesterday's Washington Post highlights the intersection of chemical ingredient secrecy and public policy.

The 1976 Toxic Substances Control Act allows companies like Chemtura to not disclose broadly-defined "confidential business information" (CBI). As the Environmental Working Group (EWG) reported last month, companies have placed CBI claims on 13,596 new chemicals produced since 1976.

Chemtura's Flamemaster 550® is one of these new chemicals, introduced as an alternative to brominated diphenyl ethers, such as Penta- and Deca-BDE. The company's website says the new product's ingredients are proprietary. And they told the Washington Post that CBI is "essential for ensuring the long-term competitiveness of U.S. industry."

"Industry had good reason to conceal the ingredients in Firemaster 550," notes EWG. If EPA scientists knew "the identity of the chemicals in Firemaster 550, the product would have come under serious scrutiny within the agency."

Yet much about Flamemaster 550®'s composition is readily known by industry competitors. A 1995 patent filed by Great Lakes Chemical (now part of Chemtura) lays out the production process and chemistry of Flamemaster 550® in great details. The primary chemical is a tetrabromobenzoate, produced from phthlalic anhydrides and 2-ethylhexanol. (Richard Rose, et al., "Use of ring-brominated benzoate compounds as flame retardants and/or plasticizers," Great Lakes Chemical Corporation, filed April 11, 1995, U.S. Patent No. 5,728,760)

While the patent describes the chemistry for all to see, Dr. Stapleton reverse engineered the flame retardant in the lab, and saw that its profile matched her findings of new chemical exposures in the household.

Patent searches and laboratory testing are common methods of identifying the composition of products. Chemtura admits this in a 2008 filing with EPA, which claims that its products' chemistry is Confidential Business Information.

An EPA form asks "whether a competitor could employ reverse engineering to identically recreate the substance." Chemtura concedes, "It is possible, but the competitor would have to have available the appropriate analytical equipment, the expertise and time."

It took me about five minutes, on-line, to find the basic process for making Flamemaster 550® via a patent search. And Dr. Stapleton's lab tests identified the product's ingredients with further precision, and without a chemical corporation's budget.

Here's the real bottom line: researchers will find out what is in problematic products, despite the TSCA CBI loophole. The sooner companies realize this, and provide full disclosure, the better it will be for their long-term positioning in the marketplace.

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SEASONS GREETING FROM THE HEALTHY BUILDING NETWORK

 

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COMING SOON: THE 2010 PHAROS DEVELOPMENT ROADMAP

 

In the coming weeks, we will publish our 2010 project development roadmap for the Pharos Project. The roadmap will outline what new product categories, impact categories, and functions will be coming online in the next 12 months.

We will steadily add products over the coming year. In fact, new products were added today (Subscribers can view products that have been added in the last week here. Not a subscriber yet? Sign up today.). Subscribers will be able to submit products they would like to see researched as we open new product categories. We will also feature new products to highlight what are the important signal issues within a product category, and demonstrate new functions so you know you are getting the most out of your subscription.

The Pharos product queue will give you the most up to date information about what stage the products you are watching are at in our research cycle. And, you can follow us via email, RSS, Twitter or Facebook to get real time updates as new products, categories, and functions become available.

The Pharos team would like to wish you a happy holiday season, and we look forward to working with you in 2010 to create a healthier, just, and environmentally sound building materials market.

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THE DECLINE OF DECA

 

The voluntary phase-out agreement announced yesterday between the EPA and major US manufacturers of a class of brominated flame retardants (BFRs) is a significant step forward in efforts to protect the environment and public health from unhealthy chemicals.

Like most "voluntary" agreements between EPA and industry; "voluntary" doesn't seem the most precise adjective for the agreement. It's like calling going to the dentist voluntary; technically true, but the vast majority of us don't feel like we have much choice. Ditto, this agreement.

And yet, for those of us who help guide the purchase of millions of dollars of building materials every day, the voluntary decision provides some relief. If the companies stop making BFRs, it is one step closer to removing a class of nasty chemicals from our radar screens. It gets us one step closer to not having to worry about whether the waiting room upholstery we are about to source for the doctor's office or hospital is free from unhealthy flame retardants.

For years, industry controlled "citizens" groups, and the usual infantry of federal and state lobbyists have been armed with millions of dollars and industry sponsored "science" to actively oppose such a "voluntary" decision. At the same time, however, there has been a whole different set of volunteers that should be congratulated for this agreement. There are the hundreds of volunteers nationwide that have taken part in "bio-monitoring" studies to measure the amount of flame retardants and other persistent chemicals in their blood and breast milk. There are the volunteers who called and testified before state legislators across the country to encourage their representatives to take state action to restrict these chemicals in light of increasingly disturbing evidence. There are the committed academic scientists who focused their research on looking at the health effects of BFRs and shared their expertise with the broader community. And then there are the untold numbers of specifiers and consumers who voluntarily chose to purchase products that didn't contain these chemicals.

The voluntary agreement to phase-out deca is not without its omissions and exemptions, and much remains to be done. But today, those of us who work at HBN and the Pharos Project honor the real "volunteers" in this agreement.

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FORMALDEHYDE IN HOMES: NOT JUST IN FEMA KATRINA TRAILERS

 

It turns out that occupants of the infamous FEMA Katrina trailers are not the only ones at risk from formaldehyde. A recent report on formaldehyde in new homes from the California Air Resources Board (CARB) found that nearly all of the 108 homes they studied had formaldehyde concentrations that exceeded guidelines for cancer and chronic irritation and significant numbers of the homes exceeded guidelines on other VOCs as well. This came as no surprise to us at HBN. Our research in the past has observed that the low ventilation rates in homes made current VOC standards inadequate to protect health and would likely lead to unsafe levels of formaldehyde and other VOC in homes.

The news of high home formaldehyde levels followed close on the heels of news that yet another official board - the expert panel for the US National Toxicology Program - unanimously voted last month to designate formaldehyde a known human carcinogen echoing the International Agency for Research on Cancer's earlier designation.

The good news is that CARB's new regulations for composite wood will help this situation by lowering allowable emissions of formaldehyde from many particle board and plywood products and a Senate committee reported out a bill last week that would make the California regulations national.

The reality remains, however, that regulations always follow in the wake of overwhelming science and best practices. In fact, they often finish a distant third in the race to protect public health. These regulations will only reduce formaldehyde exposures from a limited number of products leaving fiberglass batt insulation and other products still emitting this potent carcinogen.

Rather than wait for regulations to catch up, the best practice is to use Pharos now to specify products that are made without added formaldehyde. That's a decision that will place you much further along the path towards health, and let you breathe a little easier while you wait for regulations to catch up.

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A BREATH OF FRESH AIR FOR HEALTH CARE: KAISER PERMANENTE'S GREEN BUILDINGS FEATURED IN NYT'S BLOG

 

Kaiser Permanente's push to eliminate PVC from its facilities nationwide was highlighted on yesterday's NYT's blog, The Opinionator, as one of the health care provider's major innovations in its Total Health initiative.

In her blog, Allison Arieff specifically cites Kaiser's work to obtain PVC-free carpeting for its facilities, as PVC - a major source of dioxin (a known carcinogen) - is particularly out-of-step with healing environments and Kaiser's overall wellness agenda. Kaiser's successful campaign to spur a major manufacturer into creating PVC-free carpeting was conducted in collaboration with Healthy Building Network - and epitomizes the kind of transformative power large buyers can have in moving markets toward healthier, greener building materials.

It is this type of market impact that HBN believes will be achieved through the Pharos Project. Through the Pharos Building Product Library, specifiers of building materials can identify greener products, as well as manufacturers who share their commitment to a healthier built environment; by using the Pharos Chemical and Material Library, specifiers can see whether a product they are considering contains dioxins or other harmful chemicals.

Check out the Pharos Project and start breathing a little easier.

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MATERIAL SAFETY DATA SHEETS: MANY SIMPLY DON'T SAY

 

One of the main sources of information used to evaluate the health and safety of building materials is the Material Safety Data Sheet, or MSDS. In the United States, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) requires that MSDSes be available to employees so that they can be notified of potentially harmful substances they may come in contact with in the workplace. At the Pharos Project, the MSDS is often the starting point for our initial research on a product and its ingredients.

The first thing any researcher discovers is that MSDSes are often incomplete in their data and inconsistent in their format. Recently, the Pharos team has begun doing preliminary research into high performance coatings - specialty paints and coatings that are widely used in health care and other commercial settings. Some of the documents exemplify the MSDS conundrum.

For example, I found one manufacturer stating that their products contain no hazardous ingredients. But flipping later into the MSDS, the same manufacturer warns the user that, "This product contains chemicals known to the State of California to cause cancer and birth defects or other reproductive harm." As a researcher, I'd like to know that the product contains carcinogens on the first page, not the last.

The reality is that manufacturers have great latitude to determine whether a chemical warrants listing on an MSDS and employers and employees have little or no other information available to them. Through Pharos, we're working to uncover the realities of what hazardous chemicals are actually in products as we build out our Building Product Library and add to our Chemical and Material Library of over 9,000 chemicals.

While we do that, it is wise to consider this about MSDSes: Many Simply Don't Say.

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CANCER IN THE KITCHEN...

 

Until I read "Cancer from the Kitchen," Nicholas Kristof's opinion piece in this Sunday's New York Times, I actually thought I would take an entire weekend for my family, putting work aside for two days. But, Kristof's article was a reminder that there is little that separates my home from my work these days.

Kristof posed the "What if..." question that we at Healthy Building Network and Pharos confront daily. He asked, "What if breast cancer in the United States has less to do with insurance or mammograms and more to do with contaminants in our water or air - or in certain plastic containers in our kitchens?" At home, I think "What if my daughter's respiratory problems have less to do with smog and more to do with the plasticizers coming off the floors (as well as the shower curtains, wall coverings, upholstery, and fabric) in her life?"

Like Kristof's advisors recommended, I have eliminated plastic from the microwave and the dishwasher. I don't let my kids bring home those cheap plastic party favors (and much to their chagrin, I make them throw them in the trash if they make it through our front door). I was the first in my parent group to switch to unlined stainless steel water bottles. But, my one-woman show certainly can't tip the scales to make the world free of chemicals that can harm my daughter and her friends.

It is my work that brings me comfort. It reminds me how ubiquitous the problem is and how those who have the greatest market power can change the "What if" question. I can get rid of all the plastic containers in our home, but on a larger scale, the best I can do for my family is work to provide consumers with better information about what is in the products that they buy. So, I spend more than my allotted 40 hours per week on Pharos, communicating to those who source millions of square feet of product for hotels, hospitals, libraries, schools, and office buildings, information about the chemicals in the billions of dollars of products they purchase. I am counting on them to make the "What if..." question irrelevant.

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GREENWASH AT GREENBUILD, GAMBLING IN CASABLANCA

 

Captain Renault: I'm shocked, shocked to find that gambling is going on in here!
Croupier: Your winnings, sir.
Captain Renault: [sotto voce] Oh, thank you very much.
Captain Renault: Everybody out at once!

The reports are in. There's gambling in Casablanca. Treehugger found the usual suspects on the exhibition floor. GreenBiz too reported "more than a little hype," bordering on "irrational corporate exuberance," but was relieved that at least the aisles were not "filled with greenwash. " We ourselves blogged about Al Gore exhorting a cheering keynote crowd to "speak out against it" when they find it. A group called Forest Ethics did speak out against the greenwash Sustainable Forestry Initiative (SFI), but Green Builder Media cast a critical eye on the messenger, not the message, questioning "how much of the protest has to do with legitimate environmental concerns and how much has to do with maintaining market share." Like gambling in Rick's Café Americain, greenwash is an integral part of the Greenbuild story. But it's not the whole story.

Amidst the labels, certifications, greenmarketing, greenhype and greenwash at Greenbuild 2009, a paradigm shift was on. New informational transactions were taking place, trading on radical transparency - the convergence of information and information technology.

You could see it in a growing array of transparency tools that made their debut at Greenbuild: the Perkins+Will Precautionary List, the LEED Pilot Credit on Persistent Bioaccumulative Pollutants and our own Pharos Project. These initiatives reflect the hardening consensus that chemicals that wreak havoc on our hormones, or that accumulate in mother's milk and babies, should not be in "green" building products - regardless of whether the products are certified. These tools reinforce others that target these chemicals for avoidance, including the Cascadia GBC's Red List, the SMART standard, the Green Guide for Health Care, the Green Screen For Safer Chemicals, the international Stockholm Convention on Persistent Organic Pollutants, and a growing number of national and US state government initiatives targeting fabric treatments and flame retardants.

This is a major advance. By focusing our efforts on a goal that addresses a specific problem, we push the market towards good solutions, rather than less-bad products. And we know it will work. When brominated flame retardants were phased out of use in Europe, the concentrations in women's breast milk there declined.

In some cases, healthier alternatives are presently hard to come by. But as our own Pharos Project demonstrates, in other cases - resilient flooring, composite wood, or batt insulation - there are available mainstream products that can reduce the global footprint of persistent and bioaccumulative chemicals, without sacrificing price or performance.

When it comes to wood products, the banner hung at Greenbuild got the attention, but the nation's leading forest conservation groups have assembled an exhaustive website, www.credibleforestcertification.org, that lays out the case - explaining why LEED should not reward certifications, including the SFI, that are less protective than the FSC standards that have been painstakingly negotiated with timber companies and other stakeholders. This information - available in any format you want, short fact sheets, long policy papers, bullet points, academic studies, legal complaints, provocative ads, you name it - makes it transparently clear that the debate over the LEED certified wood credit is not an intramural contest for market share among similarly motivated do-gooders. Many USGBC members who have studied the facts for themselves publicly support an "FSC or Better" standard, including chapters in California, Massachusetts, and the Pacific Northwest.

Greenwash aside, the current market saturation of green labels and certifications seems to elicit more questions than answers. With so many products qualified for LEED credits and third party certifications, does your choice make any difference? Increasingly, the new transparency in the marketplace is revealing the answer to that question to be, yes.

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THE STORY OF CAP & TRADE

 

Global warming potential - like many health, environmental, and social issues - is hard to tag with a single number. That is why the Pharos Project is developing multi-attribute profiles for the products that go into our buildings everyday. To date, our research suggests that many factors must be addressed in combating the climate crisis, leaving the cap and trade framework's effectiveness questionable at either the company or national policy level.

Today, the folks that brought us the virally-popular The Story of Stuff have done it again with The Story of Cap & Trade, a 9-minute animated romp through the vagaries of proposals to allow companies to buy, sell, trade or bank the right to put C02 into the atmosphere. Such programs are the centerpiece of virtually every plan under discussion for addressing climate change. The conventional wisdom is that it's a no brainer. After all, it worked before to stop acid rain.

Not so fast.

For example, a June 2009 investigative news report examined numerous cap-and-trade approaches and found "no precedent showing that a cap-and-trade system would deliver in time the significant cuts in greenhouse-gas emissions that scientists say are critical to prevent catastrophic climate change." An EPA official and architect of the acid rain program says: "The PH [acidity] levels of lakes and steams improved, but they did not improve as much as we thought they would... It just did not go as far as the science had indicated it would back in the 1990s." Many streams and lakes remain unacceptably acidic. Now what?

Al Gore's new book "Our Choice: A Plan to Solve the Climate Crisis" also damns cap-and-trade with faint praise as an alternative chosen because "the US political system is incapable of making a bold and controversial decision" such as other countries who have instituted meaningful emissions regulations or a carbon tax. Why a second-rate solution to a first-rate problem? Because of the political clout exercised by oil, coal, auto and utility companies in efforts he labels "insidious," "unethical," "malignant," "disinformation" and "fraudulent."

The Story of Cap & Trade is an unconventional challenge to the conventional wisdom.

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THIS THANKSGIVING: SEE THE FOREST THROUGH THE BEANS

 

I was standing in the coffee aisle of my local co-op last Wednesday, the bustle around me signaling the start of the Thanksgiving rush. Sipping a complimentary decaf, handed to me by Dean Cycon, owner of Dean's Beans coffee, one of the co-ops most popular brands, I couldn't stop thinking about the fate of the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC)-certified wood credit in the LEED rating system.

Dean had just explained to me how every pound of his coffee that we buy, and every cup that we drink, contributes directly to better environment, health and social welfare, in every place touched by his beans. But here's what got me thinking. For Indigenous coffee farmers, he said, fair trade practices were proving to be way more important than he had foreseen. Certified fair trade practices were a cultural lifeline, a vehicle for regaining a measure of autonomy in an export-oriented economy whose dynamics are contrary to the survival of Indigenous Peoples.1

That's when I thought of Doug Pierce2 and the LEED certified wood credit. We've featured Doug's analysis of the LEED certified wood credit twice in this newsletter.3 He had recently written me again to point out that the latest proposal to create a new USGBC benchmark for the certified wood credit, while much improved on key ecological criteria, still fails to maintain the standing that Indigenous communities currently enjoy in the FSC process, a standing that is essential to the protection of their often fragile land and tenure rights.

Sometimes it's easier to see the forest through the beans. As Dean had just pointed out to me about the coffee I was sipping, fair treatment of Indigenous communities that hold valuable commercial commodities - prime coffee growing lands are not infrequently natural forests - separates the green from the greenwash when it comes to sustainability labels.

Indeed, I recalled, back in 2006 I published a point-counterpoint interview between leaders from the FSC and the industry-sponsored Sustainable Forestry Initiative (SFI). The most fundamental disagreements between the multi-stakeholder FSC and the timber-industry-dominated SFI concerned the rights of Indigenous Peoples. The SFI took the position that "[s]ome Indigenous Peoples invoke the FSC standard...because it strengthens their hand in land disputes...But forest certification should not be used as a tool to solve land disputes." The FSC said, "The FSC gives Indigenous Peoples a seat at the table, where they speak for themselves, we are an inclusive consensus-building membership organization...[I]t is difficult to practice responsible forestry in the context of a dispute over who owns the land."

Pierce calls the FSC values embodied in the current LEED credit “a cradle of modern sustainability,” translating the three values of sustainability - social equity, ecological economics and environmental protection – into 10 elegant principles, 56 criteria, along with additional on-the-ground indicators and a credible third-party assessment process. The new proposal for LEED, by rendering many of these optional, would strip indigenous communities of the already threadbare protections provided by LEED’s current embrace of the FSC standard. That’s why there is such a deep commitment among experienced green building professionals to a LEED standard that remains FSC or better.

It’s embarrassingly cliche to conclude this way, I know. But the truth is that Thanksgiving inevitably triggers reflections on the story of our country’s Indigenous Peoples. The LEED credit on certified wood is the chapter of that story that we in the green building movement will write. After your Thanksgiving meal, have a cup of coffee, think about this, and as Dean likes to say, “drink deep.”

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"RED LIST" & "PRECAUTIONARY LIST" CHEMICALS FOUND IN PREGNANT WOMEN

 

Can we agree that if toxic chemicals from a building material are showing up in babies, then that is not a "green" building material?

The Washington Toxics Coalition just released a new study in which they tested nine pregnant women, from Washington, Oregon, and California, for a range of toxic chemicals commonly found in building materials.

Specific findings of the study include:

Every woman tested was exposed to bisphenol A, the hormone disrupting chemical used to make polycarbonate plastic, the lining for food cans, and epoxy resins used in many high performance paints and coatings.

Each woman had at least two and as many as four perfluorinated compounds in her blood. These are chemicals used to create stain-protection products and non-stick cookware.

Every woman was exposed to at least four phthalates, the plasticizers and fragrance carriers found in consumer products and flexible vinyl products.

These chemicals are identified as hazardous on multiple levels by the 21 governmental lists scanned by the Pharos Chemical and Material Library (CML) -- the leading edge tool for green building professionals seeking to avoid some of the worst toxics in building products. (Click here for the CML profile for Bisphenol A)

In addition, these chemicals are also listed on The Cascadia Green Building Council's "Red List" and the Perkins + Will "Precautionary List".

You can read a Seattle Post Globe story about the study here.

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GREENBUILD, GREENWASH AND PHAROS

 

If anyone doubted the need for a tool that cuts through the fog of labels, manufacturer claims and private certification schemes that dominate the building materials market, a short stroll through the aisles of the GreenBuild exhibition hall would erase that.

Perhaps it was the aftershock of a trip though the Greenbuild exhibition hall that prompted Al Gore to exhort Greenbuild attendees this way at Chase Field on Wednesday night: "I urge the green building movement to pay attention to keeping the environmental standards high, and when you find greenwashing going on, speak out against it. Don't put up with that because they undercut the legitimate folks who are here, who are doing the right thing."

Al is right. The trouble is, it's not always that easy. Greenwashing is by definition clever, sophisticated and disingenuous, making it difficult to distinguish from legitimate green marketing. The other limitation is that individual voices rarely break through the din of Greenwash. We know from experience how difficult this can be.

Pharos will accomplish more than just making it easier for our subscribers to find materials that reflect their values; it will also amplify their individual voices into a chorus call for transparency and market transformation.

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PHAROS ONLINE: BEACON OF TRANSPARENCY FOR THE GREEN BUILDING MOVEMENT

 

Join us. Join with leading architecture and design firms, construction firms and health care systems that have already subscribed to Pharos. Use the system to research green building materials, and align your purchasing power with your values and your commitment to transparency. Support manufacturers who share that commitment.

Today's public opening of the Pharos system as an authoritative, affordable and user friendly materials evaluation tool is a major milestone in a project that began over three years ago. Following a long tradition of project development, it began with a drawing on a cocktail napkin. That's how Jason McLennan - then a principal at BNIM Architects, now CEO of the Cascadia Regional Green Building Council - first presented his vision of how to communicate a multi-attribute evaluation of building materials with in an elegant lens graphic. It seemed to us the perfect way to convey our best information and analysis to the green building community, and to accelerate market transformation. The napkin evolved into a whitepaper, the whitepaper into screen shots, and the fun began. As anyone who has tried to evaluate product sustainability will attest, it was more complicated then we could have imagined.

More than anything, we wanted Pharos to be a trustworthy tool for professionals who specify and buy building products. So the first thing you should know is that the Pharos Project is fully independent from product manufacturers. We do not charge manufacturers to have their products listed in Pharos and accept no financial contributions other than the normal subscription rate. We are funded by no-strings-attached philanthropic foundations, and a modest subscription fee.

We also wanted Pharos to provide unsurpassed depth and transparency of data and data sources. The Pharos system includes information about a product's impacts not only during use, but also upstream in manufacture and (coming soon) downstream at the end of a product's useful life. Whether the information comes from the manufacturer or our own research, we provide you with the both the source and a "Transparency Index" that lets you know the degree to which a manufacturer accepted or declined our request for product information.

And we walk our talk. Pharos provides you with all of the evaluation criteria that we use to generate the scores and graphics.

Pharos scores and elegant graphics offer users a fair assessment "at-a-glance" of the relative impacts of products. Rarely do these "at-a-glance" views suggest that one product is clearly superior to all others in all categories. More often than not, the Pharos scores reveal that products have different levels of impact in different impact categories. But the "at-a-glance" view will provide Pharos subscribers with an unprecedented amount of information that they can use to align their product choices with their own values. Pharos users can also set filters, conduct searches and create product libraries that effectively let them set their own priorities and preferences.

During our development process, we heard loud and clear that many green building professionals prefer to examine data for themselves in order to evaluate products. That is why we have prioritized development of the Chemical and Material Library, because it gives you the power to look up nearly 10,000 chemical ingredients commonly found in building products. That way, even if a product has not yet been entered into the Pharos Product Library, you can still get answers to your health related questions about product ingredients.

However you use Pharos, we don't determine what product best aligns with your values. You do. Pharos is a dynamic tool that connects you to a network of building professionals and manufacturers committed to transparency as a core value on the path to sustainability. We invite you to join and participate. Like it's namesake, the great lighthouse of ancient Alexandria, Pharos is a guide. You will set the future course to radical transparency.

Subscribe now to get the most out of the system.

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