Since 2000 when the Healthy Building Network (HBN) was founded, the advocacy group has been researching and making public their findings on environmentally friendly building materials and policies. In 2006 HBN introduced the Pharos Project, to publish information on the environmental impact of building materials commonly used by today’s architecture and construction industry sectors. In 2009, Pharos received an award from the United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), which called the project “a revolutionary on-line tool for evaluating and comparing the health, environmental and social impacts of building materials in a comprehensive and transparent way.” In my series of Q&As about the Health Product Declaration (HPD), I asked Bill Walsh, founder of HBN and executive director, to provide the public advocate’s point of view. Here he talks about some initial victories and the dogged efforts of a small group of dedicated professionals (30 people in all) who have volunteered for the battle to clean up our environment, one building product at a time.

Susan S. Szenasy:  Recently you wrote in Healthy Building News that “March 17th marks the 10th anniversary of the EPA order that made it illegal to use the arsenic-based pesticide CCA (chromated copper arsenate) to treat wood intended for most residential uses,” and that, as a result, “the amount of arsenic used in the United States [has dropped] from over twenty metric tons annually to approximately six” since 2003. What do these hopeful numbers tell you about the inroads HPD can make on helping to eliminate toxic materials from our built environment?

Bill Walsh: The Healthy Building Network initiated the effort to create the Health Product Declaration [HPD] because informed customers are the most influential driver of healthier building products. With pressure treated wood, once consumers understood that there were two equivalent types of product on the market – that with arsenic, and that without – the writing was on the wall. Chemical manufacturers voluntarily withdraw their requests to EPA for an exemption to arsenic restrictions. That made it easy for EPA to take the action it did.

As HPDs gain currency, unnecessary, avoidable toxic hazards will be the first thing to go. For example, I expect we will see a steady transition out of chemical flame-retardants in many uses where they are unnecessary, such as below grade foam insulation, and provide no added safety benefit, such as in upholstery foams. Leading manufacturers have also said that the HPD will create an incentive for companies to make quiet transitions in order to avoid disclosing problematic chemicals.

Over the long-term, the HPD is going to create incentives for continuous improvement toward ever-healthier building products. But the first thing the HPD is going to accomplish is a rapid acceleration away from hazards that can be avoided today.

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