“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.

Having followed Robin Guenther’s work for some time, when Fast Company named this FAIA and LEED AP one of “The World’s 100 Most Creative People in Business 2012,” I was delighted, but not surprised. The sustainable healthcare design leader at Perkins + Will is known as a strong and persistent advocate for human- and planetary health. Her crusade to increase her own knowledge about our material world gives her the authority of someone with genuine concern for her fellow creatures and long-term experience in the complex filed of health care design. Her advice to the magazine’s readers about the materials we live with every day, is dramatic in its simplicity:

“If they don’t tell you what’s in it, you probably don’t want what’s in it.”

“Consult your nose—if it stinks, don’t use it.”

“Use carbohydrate-based materials when you can.”

With this in mind, I asked Robin to talk about the Health Products Disclosure (HPD) initiative, and how it may change our material world for the better. Read her realistic, but optimistic observations on everything from HPD’s short and long term influence on the built environment, to the power of the design community in creating positive change in the marketplace, and more.

Susan S. Szenasy:  You have been an eloquent advocate for patients (in fact anyone who works or visits) in the healthcare segment for as long as I can remember. Your ammo has been finding the least toxic, most healthy products available for the interiors you design. In view of your long and inspiring campaign for healthy interiors, what does the formation of HPD signal to you?

Robin Guenther: The HPD represents a major milestone in the advocacy for safer and healthier building materials.  For the first time, we will have access to important, accurate information on the contents of building materials – “a nutrition label,” so to speak, that we can use to inform our specifications. As the HPD information is used to build Pharos, the Healthy Building Network comparative tool, it will accelerate the possibility of independent comparisons of products, another important aspect of this quest. Read more…

As head of the Health Product Declaration (HPD) Collaborative, Peter C. Syrett comes to the project with a robust track record  that includes his work at Perkins + Will. Five years ago that firm released its Precautionary List, based on nearly a decade of research of potentially toxic materials specified by the architecture and interior design professionals who shape our built environment, inside and outside. Today, Syrett is chairman of the HPD board and has recently launched a new firm, rePlaceUrban Studio, with his partner Philip Palmgren who lead the urban design practice in the New York office of Perkins + Will. “As a practice we aim to build social, ecological, and economic capital in each of our endeavors,” promises Syrett. “We strive to create a healthier urban future;” their new website will be up and running on March 18th. Here he gives some thoughtful answers to questions about what HPD is doing and how it’s going about making our built environment healthier for all who live and work in it.

Susan S. Szenasy: You were part of the group at Perkins + Will that came up with the firm’s Precautionary List of building and furnishings materials known to be dangerous to human health. Can you explain the genesis of that program and what you all hoped would happen as a result of the firm’s free sharing of the information you collected?

Peter C. Syrett: I believe the transformation of the building material market into one that supports human and ecological health will occur in three phases. The first phase is awareness; the Precautionary List is apart of this phase. The Precautionary List grew out of nine years of research on material health.  When we released it in 2009 it was intended to be an open resource on substances of concern in building materials, with the intent of provoking action in the design community.

We are now in the second phase, which is about the curation and dissemination of information. In this phase awareness continues to grow through greater access to information while the quality of the information and its specificity improves. The HPD is the main tool of this phase.

The last phase is innovation. In this phase the market begins to react to the knowledge gained in the earlier two phases. Tools like the HPD will still need to exist in this last stage because we always need a means to get concise information about a product’s content and its associated health issues. That is why the Precautionary List was so important; it got people to look at the built environment in a different way. It is like reading, once you learn to read you can’t look at a word and not read it. My hope is that designers, owners, builders, now look at a material and can’t help think what is in it because of the Precautionary List.

SSS: Now you are chairman of the HPD Board (and working at a new firm). Can you talk about your plans in going forward with HPD and what your goals are? Is there a timeline for action?

PCS: Last fall at GreenBuild we released the first version of the HPD.  Until then all our efforts were focused upon creating the HPD and gathering a core group of earlier supporters and enlightened manufacturers for the pilot program. Now that HPD Standard is out we need to quickly build the organizational structure to increase the number of HPDs.  We see this as a multi-pronged effort. Foremost, we must increase demand for HPDs.  Fortunately, this is already happening.  Just last week Cannon Design sent out a letter to manufacturers requesting HPDs “for products used in our buildings be publicly provided” and by January 1, 2015,  “only products with product content transparency will be allowed in our library and selected for inclusion on projects.” We will work hard to make sure that Cannon Design’s insistence on HPDs becomes the norm in the building industry.

We are also setting up a universal approach for the adoption by rating systems, certifying organizations, purchasing groups, and other parties that wish to use the HPDs as a disclosure standard. This is a complex effort, but is essential to making HPDs a part of standard practice.

Most importantly, we are looking at ways to help manufacturers to provide HPDs for their products. Creating a HPD, even for the most basic product, takes a huge amount of effort.  Partnering with the manufacturing community is essential for the success of the HPD. To that end, we will be reaching out to members of the manufacturing community that have NOT embraced the use of HPDs to get their input on what we need to do to make the HPD work for them.   This will allow us to better refine the HPD for its next update.

Ultimately, we hope that use of HPDs exponentially increases in the next few years. We are going to do everything possible to make this a reality. Read more…

The U.S. EPA, the European Union Commission on the Environment, the State of California are among the government organizations that have come out on the side of healthy materials for our built environment. In addition, there are a growing number of associations and firms engaged in collecting data on toxic materials that should be avoided, sharing their information with the public. They include the Healthy Building Network ‘s Pharos Project, Clean Production Action, Perkins + Will’s Precautionary List, Living Building Challenge and that organization’s Watch List, and the various LEED programs, such as HC and Pilot.

Most recently, the first open standard format for reporting the content and hazards in building products was launched at Greenbuild 2012. Called the Health Product Declaration (HPD) Open Standard Version 1, the program is managed by a non-profit group of collaborators. The HPD Collaborative is lead by the Pilot Project Committee of 29 building product manufacturers and 50 expert reviewers from across the building industry. The collaborative is in the process of developing, maintaining, and evolving the HPD Open Standard to meet the growing demand from the design and specifying community for health information on the many products used in our buildings. Included in this pilot group is the Canadian furniture manufacturer Teknion. In an effort to build the case for HPD, starting from the supplier’s point of view, I asked Tracy Backus, LEED AP ID+C, director of sustainability programs at Teknion U.S. to answer a few questions. Here she talks about what one manufacturer is doing to safeguard human health, and the Earth that gives us life.

Susan S. Szenasy: As a member of the Health Product Declaration (HPD) Working Group, in the manufacturing sector, and with Teknion’s long-term commitment to environmental health, could you tell us why your firm has decided to join this particular group? And what are your hopes for outcomes?

Tracy Backus: We were asked by Google to participate originally.  As we looked more closely at our history and how Teknion has already made steps to reduce chemicals from our products, like PVC, it was a natural for us to begin the work of full disclosure to the public. The challenge was developing a method that worked for all manufactures of building materials. That is the work of the HPD.

SSS: I understand you heard about HPD from a client, Google, in search of more transparency in products’ chemical/material content, as these relate to human health effects. What was Google looking for?

TB: Google is aligning its business to protect the health and well-being of it’s employees by building and procuring products that eliminate chemicals of concern, identified by the EPA, Living Building Challenge, and the National Cancer Institute. They are investing and, therefore, expect the same of manufacturers to advance the industry to research and develop safer materials for the built environment. Read more…