The Green Building Environment

Text for Slide Show

Hollis Grigsby

In 1992 and 1993 the word green was still just a color, not the way it is now which is a not just a movement but a way of life. There are dozens of green building rating systems and certification programs that are used by manufacturers are used all throughout the world.

So, we're familiar with systems like green guard or green seal and these certifications basically will tell the manufacturer and the consumer that these products are stamped with this green seal that tells us this material is better. These are not designed to do anything more than just tell you can use it on a certified green building project and it's all based upon consumers and it's all based upon information… whether it's actual scientific or factual information homeowners don't care whether this product is a GS 11 which stands for green seal standard for paints and coatings

what they care about is this safe, will it poison me or you know if my dog lays on this carpet is there a possibility that the dog will develop cancer which is happening at an exponential rate right now according to studies.

So, there are kind of three categories that I’m going to focus on here: human health, environment health and overall sustainability

because some customers they don't care if a material used in their home contains recycled content or is recyclable to them the most important aspect is….

is this product toxic or safe…

now on the flip side some customers really do value what the overall carbon footprint of a product is or if its recyclable once it's past its useful life. You can decide for yourself what does green mean for you and how these can fit into your project!

I noticed in my own research that there's a lot of things that claim to be ecofriendly or probably are but they're not human safe or there's a lot of things that are not toxic, but they have a horrible effect on the environment and vice versa.

I think that it’s so important and I’ve done a lot of education on my side over the years and especially through this project about things we bring into our home… the cleaners …the beauty products… the things that we are exposed to every day, but I think a lot of people may assume that a house or building itself if it's a few years old have off gassed that it's safe and not something to worry about, but the research is saying otherwise.

There are about 88,000 chemicals that are used in the production of building products and home goods and out of those 88,000 chemicals only 3% have ever been tested by a government agency to determine whether or not they're actually toxic to humans or not so out of the 87,000 chemicals that are left we have absolutely no idea what they do to the human body...

we don't know that once these chemicals start to combine in the air that they create this toxic soup inside of the home.

So, manufacturers are coming out with quote unquote green materials to meet the EPA regulations for outdoor air pollution but what they don't actually tell you when they say these products are zero VOC, air safe and air friendly is if you actually drill down to the details, you'll find that the VOC regulations have nothing to do with human health but they have everything to do with outdoor air pollution and smog.

It's not that I don't care about the outdoor climates… but what I do care about it, and focused this research on is that designing healthy places means designing for human occupants first.

Because to us, human friendly is the ultimate environmentally friendly. If you do everything in your power to make products that are healthier for the outdoor environment, you still might end up poisoning the occupants over time because there are so many chemicals that are used that are not actually classified as being regulated… So, manufacturers can use them and not tell you about it.

Some of the biggest offenders in most homes I’ll have listed in these next few slides...

**** CHEMICAL SLIDES

So I believe the three biggest offenders you find in the home are formaldehyde, mold and VOC’s. Most of them are very dangerous to humans and we should avoid them as much as possible..

the problem is that the EPA paints all VOC’s with the same brush and it's for instance in paints and coatings. Years ago, manufacturers would use ethylene glycol and ethylene glycol is actually antifreeze for your car, it is highly toxic to humans and pets and plants, but they use it in paint because it helps to keep the paint from drying out. So, there is this company called Safe coat and Safe coat used propylene glycol which is kind of a close cousin chemically speaking at least in the name………….. the chemistry is completely different but it's completely harmless to humans especially in the method it was being used……..

I mean nobody would drink paint of course but when you put it on your wall it wouldn't release anything that would actually be absorbed by the human body so that was completely toxin free…. Then the EPA says well they're both glycols (VOC’s) therefore there both bad and you can’t use that and call your product safe, so they had to reformulate their product. Most manufacturers who make low VOC paints actually use a combination of what are called unregulated DLC's so things like ammonia and acetone so It can be a very dangerous thing in the home… so you have to be aware of the toxicity of the ingredient not necessarily whether it's a VOC or not.

Formaldehyde is used in so many building products and so many consumer goods that we wouldn't even recognize that it's there and formaldehyde is triggering not only for people with a chemical sensitivity but for those who suffer from asthma. If we can eliminate formaldehyde in the house from all the sources that it comes from, we would probably solve about 3/4 of the problem with the chemical environment inside of most homes.

So, for formaldehyde there is a testing system that is a formaldehyde release attenuation test and what this does is this actually pinpoints the exact surface inside of the home that is releasing formaldehyde. This test tests down to one part per billion…... so minuscule levels but at that small level people can still have reactions. So just to give you an example the LEED level if you were building a LEED platinum project in the ambient air, they want you to have no greater than 17 parts per billion of formaldehyde in the air….

WELL inside the average home if you have carpet that could be between 400 and 600 parts per billion just by the carpet itself.

If you have one room in the house that has wallpaper along the edges of the room the adhesive that you use for that border can contain up to 4000 parts per billion of formaldehyde. Even wood glues that are marketed as being nontoxic water-based glues will release formaldeyde after application and they have cured.

So we ask ourselves how does that if formaldehyde get in there? Isn’t on the list of ingredients?

So what’s been determined is that manufacturers use what are called

formaldehyde donors or formaldehyde precursors

and these are chemicals that in a liquid state they're really undetectable, and in a liquid state each ingredient makes up less than 1% of the volume so it doesn't have to be listed on the ingredients… BUT when you put it on the surface and it starts to cure, it actually creates formaldehyde that is off gassing into your homes air.

So, it gets around the regulations and it gets around any green certification because they don't test it, and then once it's in your home it releases potentially toxic levels of formaldehyde.

So, with natural building or green building we're advocating for healthy homes we always have to remember that just because something is natural doesn't mean it's actually safe and just because something is synthetic or quote unquote petroleum based does not mean it's dangerous. For those who don't know the exact definition of VOC is volatile organic compound it's a carbon-based molecule that's readily vaporized at room temperature. So, from there it evaporates off the surface, travels to the upper atmosphere and then reacts with nitrogen and UV to create smog… so that's the exact EPA definition of it, but nowhere in that definition is say anything about human health… it's 100% regulated because of outdoor air pollution and smog.

There are so many chemicals that are found in the average home, but it's been estimated that the average new home construction there's between 10 and 15,000 chemicals in the air just from the building process itself so if we can reduce that chemical load through better, fewer toxic materials it's better for the homeowner when they move in… but think about how much better that is going to be for the guys building those houses or those apartment complexes or whatever it may be.

So, take VOC’s in paint, those can off gas for up to four and a half years. In MDF which stands for medium density fiberboard there is an adhesive used in between those two plies plus the fiberboard may contain formaldehyde and formaldehyde that's found in fiberboard and plywood and OSB can off gas for literally dozens of years so it's just a matter of finding the brands that are safe. I truly believed before starting this project and especially now after that you cannot fully design a healthy place without using better materials. There is just no way that we can truly be healthy breathing in these chemicals as we inhabit these spaces. There are some studies and test results on man-made Woods, so think like engineered wood that's over 30 years old but still tests positively for having formaldehyde off gassing so it really will off gas for the lifespan of the product line.

So now that I’ve probably made you all want to go live outside in a tent, the moral the story is there is no such thing as a perfect house there is no such thing as a perfect product nothing will hit all degrees of being green or good for us 100%. At this point in time, it's impossible…. you're going to drive yourself nuts trying to find perfection. It's not there and you or your future clients have to choose wisely and choose what makes the most sense for you and your family or for your business, and I think that this is where we can implement good design and being conscious for all parties into the picture because designing healthy places isn’t just about implementing one thing into the process.

One of the downfalls of being able to build better at least in West Virginia, is that banks and local code doesn’t see a point in financing or supporting these kinds of materials or projects. They just don’t see it as a necessity or think that human health is as important as the financing and timeline of finishing a project and getting payback. Which is really heart breaking because not everyone can afford to make up the difference in cost in building a healthier home or business.

**** LEED SECTION … READ THESIS AND ALL FIRST ******

So, before I start this next section on LEED, I want to quote a book called “The Green Building Revolution” written by Jerry Yudelson to give a little background for those of you who may not be in a LEED class yet, I know Lydia and Sierra both are in the class with me this semester so they may have some input in this section as well.

It says “A revolution is going on all over this land and it's about time! It is transforming the marketplace for buildings homes and communities and it is part of a larger sustainability revolution that will transform just about everything we know, do, and experience! Over the next few decades this revolution is about green building, and its aim is nothing less than to fundamentally change the built environment by creating energy efficient, healthy, productive buildings that reduce or minimize the significant impacts of buildings on urban life and on local regional and global environments. In 1993 the US green building council was founded to drive this change and in 2000 we launched the LEED…. Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design green building rating system to provide a common definition and way to measure green buildings. A point based system, LEED buildings according to key environmental attributes such as site impacts, energy, and water use materials and resource conservation and indoor environmental quality to our delight and somewhat to our surprise by 2006 LEED had taken the country by storm as of early 2007 19 States and 59 cities along with some of the biggest and most prestigious names in the building industry including the developer of Ground Zero Larry Silverstein had made all serious commitments to using the LEED rating system for their projects. These are front and center and the they are interconnected in a very important way these are the health of our cities and the impact of climate change we build green buildings because they matter but nowhere do they matter more than this epic battle we've just begun with ourselves over carbon dioxide emissions which are driving global climate change

The reason I wanted to share this little section is because it is telling about what LEED is, and their focus on human health and the environment. For them, human health and what is good for the environment essentially go hand in hand.

** SMACNA = sheet metal and air conditioning national contractor’s association

***** BETTER MATERIALS EXPLANATION=

Extreme green board is a great option because breathability is a huge factor when it comes to living in a healthy home, it is what prevents mold. If you think back to the times before Air conditioning, they actually had respectively better air quality than us (if they were living say on a farm or something) because they used windows and the fresh outside air to ventilate their houses, today we rely on systems to circulate the air, and since it’s not always running this is where we could run into some problems like increased CO2 levels and poor air quality. If we are using toxic building materials, we are sitting in these chemicals which is what experts call a toxic soup. So, what green board is a sheathing material made from magnesium oxide rather than formaldehyde. Rock wool is on here because will is a great natural insulator, it is naturally flame resistant and it wont mold. There's a lot of natural Wallpapers that aren't soaked in a chemical dye, instead they just use vegetable dyes and they're made of either seagrass or pounded bark. There is also recycled jeans that can be used for insulation and tons of recycled or natural materials that can be great alternatives to some typical house materials. One of my favorite options is by a company called Accoya that is out there treating wood with vinegar.

So, I won’t go into all of these, but I just wanted to point out a few options, I know that for many the concern is that they wont work as well as the traditional materials, but what is great about these companies is that they are out their educating contractors on set up and installation and are constantly testing their product.

*** MURC 100 drywall installation

*** FOREVER BOARD drywall installation

*** ENVIROSAFE paint

***VERSABOND grout

Thanks for listening to my presentation on green building materials!