The Misperception of Green Buildings: A Needed Shift for Our Own Health
Sustainable Interior Design Issues
In recent years, the construction industry has adapted to ‘green building’ to reduce the environmental impact by minimising energy consumption.
In this blog I’ll share 2 critical points you need to know to protect your health and avoid costly mistakes.
The issues with sustainable interior design:
Greenwashing in marketing
Green building is “the practice of creating structures and using processes that are environmentally responsible and resource-efficient throughout a building's life-cycle from siting to design, construction, operation, maintenance, renovation and deconstruction” (U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, 2016). However, as I’ll help you to understand, the industry is not exempt from the issues of greenwashing in marketing
Have you ever specifically bought a product like shampoo or detergent because it had ‘organic’ or ‘green’ in its name, without reading the label entirely? Is it really organic, or environmentally sourced, or whichever aspect the label may appear to promote at first glance?
Greenwashing is the unjustifiable or exaggerated claims of sustainability or environmental benefits in an attempt to increase profitability and sales (Dahl, 2010). There are many products and materials out there, and unfortunately terms like these are incorporated into branding, rather than offering the formal certifications.
Once I bought some apples, thinking they were organic. In the fine print, it became apparent that the certification was still in progress…
On a side note, apples are part of the ‘Dirty Dozen’ most pesticide-ridden produce. Concerningly, the samples are taken AFTER they’ve been washed and/or peeled for consumption. With regular produce, it’s impossible to avoid ingesting these chemicals.
In Australia, organic products have the Australian Certified Organic (ACO) label by ACOS Standards. These products can range from food through to clothing and soft furnishings.
However, they’re not just chemical free. To obtain the ACO label, they must abide by an entire holistic approach – from the soil, to the flora and fauna to people and the environment. It applies to the complete life cycle of the product.
‘The world around us can’t possibly be harmful. We wouldn’t have created it that way in the first place…’
Construction, design and building materials are not exempt from the greenwashing issues in the marketing field.
But perhaps more dangerous is the naïve belief that things are always done ethically and sustainably.
I have lost count of the amount of times I have been told that our built environments cannot be toxic.
Why would we be designing or building them if they were?
Can I remind you of asbestos? Research sadly suggests that symptoms may not eventuate for 2-3 decades after exposure. Or there’s the more recent concerns of silicosis caused by the manufacturing and processing of composite stone materials.
Most industries are more concerned with profit margins than they are with health.
I investigated replacing my current gas cooktop for an electric induction alternative.
I struggled to find one with the exact same benchtop cut out in the composite stone and was advised that even a minimal 10mm wide cut to suit the closest-matching cooktop cutout size would require the room to be sealed off and treated as a silicosis risk due to possible crystalline silica fragments within the consequential dust.
And then there is the toxicity of phthalates, which can hide in many plastic and vinyl products including flooring. Or synthetic formaldehyde lurking in many adhesives and lacquers, including some bamboo flooring, or even within composite timbers used in cabinetry and furniture.
In recent decades, the world has been adapting to address increasing environmental issues. Resource efficiency is often the focus, especially around energy and water. Though acknowledging occupant health and subsequent exposure to toxic substances is often missed or misunderstood.
Sadly, it is not unusual for buildings to meet the greatest criteria for energy efficiency or sustainability but be constructed with materials that contain toxins or chemicals that have been linked to neurotoxicity, developmental and reproductive toxicity, and even cancer (Goodwin Robbins et al., 2020).
The incorporation of toxicology and exposure science is required at the onset of the development of buildings and their components and materials. While this level of research is assumingly expensive, so is the aftermath of public health disasters.
For example:
An approximated $953 billion was spent to remediate lead-based paint within homes (Zimmer & Ha, 2017) from around the 1950’s until its prohibition, leading to irreversible health, economic and societal damages (Gould, 2009).
Approximately $266 billion was spent on health and economic loss subsequent to polybrominated diphenyl ether (PBDE) (Attina et al., 2016), a flame retardant commonly associated with upholstery, foam and furniture. PBDEs have a similar chemical structure to polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs), which were prohibited in 1978 and we could have therefore predicted the current health illnesses that PBDEs have been linked to (Goodwin Robbins et al., 2020).
Foreseeing such detrimental consequences is of course difficult. But researching and compiling material safety data sheets of all constituents could be beneficial from the onset. Research is already evident that links certain toxicants to health conditions and disease, yet we still incorporate them into buildings.
By being open to and aware of these principles, what is commonly overlooked or even dismissed, we position ourselves to make greater choices. With a knowledge and understanding on how buildings and interior environments can impact our health, we can make better decisions.
This awareness will then drive the demand for more suitable approaches, while reducing the demand for the manufacture or development of not-so-great common options that we are exposed to today.
We need to manoeuvre from a somewhat exclusive ‘green building’ approach to an all-inclusive and holistic understanding of the health of occupants also – the health of both the environment and society. It is a toxic concoction that we are exposed to.
While it is almost impossible to remove all toxins, we should be aiming to reduce them.
By reducing our exposure to pollutants where we can, we can reduce our toxic load.
There are many aspects to create a healthy building or a healthy space. At The Paradigm Room we strive to push beyond what is done, to what is best.
We assess such risks then offer alternatives intended to have a much lesser impact to you, to your family, to your colleagues.
This paradigm shift is what the building and design industry need in order to preserve both human health and the health of the environment.
REFERENCES
Attina, T. M., Hauser, R., Sathyanarayana, S., Hunt, P. A., Bourguignon, J. P., Myers, J. P., DiGangi, J., Zoeller, R. T., & Trasande, L. (2016). Exposure to endocrine-disrupting chemicals in the USA: a population-based disease burden and cost analysis. Lancet Diabetes Endocrinol, 4(12), 996-1003. https://doi.org/10.1016/s2213-8587(16)30275-3
Dahl, R. (2010). Green Washing. Environmental Health Perspectives, 118(6), A246-A252. https://doi.org/10.1289/ehp.118-a246
Goodwin Robbins, L. J., Rodgers, K. M., Walsh, B., Ain, R., & Dodson, R. E. (2020). Pruning chemicals from the green building landscape. Journal of Exposure Science & Environmental Epidemiology, 30(2), 236-246. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41370-019-0174-x
Gould, E. (2009). Childhood lead poisoning: conservative estimates of the social and economic benefits of lead hazard control. Environ Health Perspect, 117(7), 1162-1167. https://doi.org/10.1289/ehp.0800408
U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. (2016). Definition of Green Building.
Zimmer, A. T., & Ha, H. (2017). People, planet and profit: Unintended consequences of legacy building materials. Journal of environmental management, 204, 472-485.