“Architects have a greater ability to improve public health than medical professionals.”

That provocative statement was made by a physician, Dr. Claudia Miller, an assistant dean at the University of Texas School of Medicine, on a panel I moderated on healthy building materials during our second annual firm-wide Green Week.

From left to right:  HKS G Green Week 2 panelists Jason McLennan, Bill Walsh, Kirk Teske, Dr. Claudia Miller, and Howard Williams.

More than 800 of our co-workers heard nationally recognized leaders discuss everything from the impacts of LEED v4 to the latest in energy modeling software. In addition to Dr. Miller, the panel included Jason McClennan, founder and creator of the Living Building Challenge and CEO of the International Living Future Institute; Bill Walsh, executive director of the Healthy Building Network , and Howard Williams, vice president at Construction Specialties, a global building materials supplier.

Though the panelists – a designer, physician, manufacturer, sustainability activist, and a building certification creator – come with different skill sets and perspectives, their combined knowledge and collective purpose was clear: They made a unanimous call for cooperation and transparency from building product manufacturers. This is exactly the type of collaborative action our industry needs to shift the building materials paradigm from translucent to transparent, and from toxic to healthy.

Architects and designers can leverage their specification power to transform the building product marketplace, suggested Dr. Miller.  Like medical professionals, the design community has a duty to protect the public which has the right to know what’s in the products that surrond them. And the specifiers of those products  have the duty to select those that minimize impact on the environment and the people who occupy the spaces they create. Doctors can treat only one patient at a time, Dr. Miller added, while architects who specify environmentally responsible products help safeguard the health of a far greater number of people.

McLennan, an architect himself and author of the Living Building Challenge’s chemicals Red List, empathized with designers who want to do the right thing but face some huge challenges when they try. He said he understood that the design community is daunted by the obstacle of sorting through volumes of lists, varying standards, certifications, materials evaluations, and possible greenwashing. “The reality of all of this must seem overwhelming to an architect on a deadline – you shouldn’t have to be a toxicologist to specify healthy building products,” said McClennan. “The paradigm is backwards. We shouldn’t have to go out of our way to specify healthy building materials. The opposite should be true.”

Williams pointed out that architects and specifiers have numerous resources at their disposal to ascertain which ingredients should be avoided without having to fully grasp the science. These resources include the Healthy Building Network’s Pharos Project with its comprehensive chemicals library of more than 22,000 materials profiled; the EPA BEES (Building for Environmental and Economic Sustainability) 4.0 software and the S.I.N. (Substitute It Now) List, an NGO-driven project based in Sweden to speed up the transition to a toxic-free world.

Walsh reminded us that the volunteers of the Health Product Declaration Collaborative are working to remedy this challenge with their HPD Open Standard, a universal format that systemizes reporting language to enable transparent disclosure of building product content and associated health information. The HPD collaborative is comprised of a group of green building industry leaders who spent a year developing the standard, which launched last November.

A month later HKS sent an open letter to manufacturers requesting that they disclose the chemical contents in their products through the Health Product Declaration Collaborative. Since then, several other design firms have issued similar letters. The marketplace is taking notice. Manufacturers are reaching out to learn more about our goals.

In discussing concerns over VOCs, halogenated flame retardants and chlorine-based plastics, Walsh explained that “… we’re very early in the science of chemical impact, and the unknowns of the multigenerational impact of chemical exposure on people, but sunlight is the best disinfectant. We’re working toward a labeling-and-certification program that fully aligns with other systems, like the Living Building Challenge.”

While the chemical industry has been reluctant to open up, said Williams, there’s good reason for optimism. With the growing demand for greater ingredient transparency in all we consume and use from all sectors of the building industries, the voices of architects and designers, companies demanding green office space, policymakers, health and green advocates and, most important, consumers are being heard.

“I’ve had some extremely positive conversations with CEOs – there’s a noticeable market shift here and in Europe, especially in retail,” said Williams. He added that progressive companies like Google do not allow their workplaces to include substances on the LBC’s Red List.  Early on, he says his firm recognized the advantage of disclosing the chemical contents of its products.

All of us agreed that progress is being made toward improved transparency. And the power of actions taken by architects and specifiers will lead to more rapid change. A holistic approach to the problem among those pressing for the disclosure of product ingredients, consumer demand, manufacturers with credible and realistic answers from their supply chains all contribute to creating safer, cleaner products.

We as architects have the power to seek out and specify healthier building materials. It’s our fundamental responsibility as design professionals to do so. Simply put, 21^st century buildings must show a deep understanding of much more than energy conservation. Our buildings need to address the long-term wellbeing of life (human and otherwise) and the environment that supports all living creatures.

Kirk Teske, AIA, LEED AP BD+C, principal and chief sustainability officer at HKS, a design firm based in Dallas. He is president of the AIA Dallas Chapter. Find Kirk at kteske@hksinc.com, www.hksinc.com and @KirkTeske on Twitter.

Other points of view about HPD -

The furniture manufacturer.

The chairman.

The founder of the Healthy Building Network.

The sustainable healthcare design leader.

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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