how ‘healthy’ are ‘green’ buildings?
Dec 2022
It's wonderful that there is growing focus on sustainability and energy efficiency in the building industry, especially here in Australia.
Australia was credited as being at the forefront of this trend in the 2018 World Green Building Trends market report, and this is absolutely something to be proud of.
But having studied healthy home design and healthy building materials in Australia and the US, and looked at various rating schemes, building standards and codes, there are still some really important elements missing in our efforts to create healthier homes.
Here are four examples of where I see human health being compromised, in 'green' buildings...
1. The highest ratios of airborne toxics, including formadlehyde, toluene and xylenes, were found in a GREEN building, in a 2018 study by the CSIRO accross 40 universities, which concluded:
"Greater attention to indoor VOCs in new construction, renovated spaces, green buildings and understudied environments such as schools, is needed," the study by Goodman et al. concluded.
Formaldehyde is a group 1 carcinogen to humans agent (IARC, 2012), it can have adverse effects on the eyes, skin, respiratory and nervous systems (headaches, dizziness, disturbed sleep, weakness and apathy (National Research Council, Committee on Toxicology, 1980).
Xylene can have adverse effects on the nervous system, eyes, nose, and throat, gastrointestinal tract and musculoskeletal system; irritate skin, lungs, and cause chest pain and shortness of breath (Kandyala, Raghavendra & Rajasekharan, 2010).
Toluene - is harmful to the central nervous system, according to the US EPA (2005). Symptoms observed in humans exposed to airborne toluene include fatigue, sleepiness, headaches, and nausea; irritation to the upper respiratory tract and eyes; developmental defects, attention deficits, and minor limb an craniofacial anomalies in children of pregnant women exposed to high levels of toluene, or mixed solvents, by inhalation.
Although there are more low VOC and zero VOC options being introduced to the market, often these labels can be misleading, I’ve shared why in this article.
2. Then there’s the prevalence of Poly Vinyl Chloride (PVC) homes where energy efficiency is a key focus, because of its thermal properties (PVC windows for example). PVC is a material we need to be working towards phasing out as a matter of urgency it is so detrimental to wellbeing in humans and our environment.
PVC contains bisphenol A (BPA), which has been found to be an endocrine disruptor (Seachrist, D. et al 2016), linked to testicular and breast cancers, early onset puberty in girls (Leonardi et al. 2017), polycystic ovarian syndrome (Rashidi et al 2017), diabetes (Hwang et al. 2018), and heart disease (Gao & Wang 2014).
Vinyl chloride is classified a Group 1 carcinogen to humans’ agent by the International Agency for Research on Cancer (2018). It can also leach dioxin, which is a potent carcinogen and is widely recognised in scientific literature as the most toxic chemical known to man (Marinkovic et al. 2010 a). It is also listed in the Environmental WorkingGroup’s Dirty Dozen Endocrine Disruptors (2013) along with BPA.
2. LED light bulbs may be energy efficient, but the blue light some of them emit can throw our circadian rhythm out of balance, impacting our production of melatonin, which in turn impacts our ability to get a deep and restful sleep, throw our hormones out of balance, and compromise our immunity.
Melatonin also plays an important role in childhood growth and building organs, tissues, and muscle mass, as well as growth and re-mineralistion of bones (Picinato et al. 2008). It also regulates excess oestrogen. Excess oestrogen is linked to breast cancer (Menendez-Menendez 2018).
It's mind-boggling to think that something as simple as getting the lighting in your home right, can reduce your cancer risk, isn't it?
It’s best to opt for warm LED lights rather than bright white. You ideally want to avoid blue light in the 400 to 500 nanometre range.
3. 'Smart' and 'intelligent' homes are being pushed as the way forward for more sustainable homes, without any understanding of the health impacts of smart technology, which increases our exposure to electromagnetic fields in our homes.
They include increased cancer risk, changes to DNA, hormone imbalances, learning and behaviour disorders, heart palpitations, insomnia, depression, anxiety, neurodegenerative disease, infertility, miscarriage, fatigue, headaches and more (International EMF Scientist Appeal, 2015). It seems a big price to pay, doesn't it?
I've seen examples of family members experiencing insomnia and migraines, in every case, that member of the household was spending long periods of time each day next to their wifi router, either next to their bedhead, their computer, or television set. I had a client whose young twin girls were not sleeping.
The electromagnetic radiation levels in their bedrooms due to their baby monitors were the same as at the WiFi router. The mother messaged me two days after choosing to stop using the baby monitors and said both girls were now sleeping soundly.
It's not to say we should do away with wonders of technology, but we need to understand the short-term and long-term health effects and use technology in a safer way. For example, I use hardwired internet at home. This one really simple change has made a huge difference to how I feel at the end of the working day at my laptop.
If you want to know what science says about all this, I’ve poured through decades of scientific literature and peer reviewed studies and shared findings in my Radiofrequency Radiation: the facts and strategies I implement to reduce my exposure at home in the Low EMF Home e-course, if you’d like to learn more.
If you’re building your own home, there are a number of really simple strategies you can implement in your designs that will make a significant difference to your family’s exposure levels to sources of EMF inside and outside your home, which we cover in the Build a Healthy Home e-course, with the learnings summarised in a really comprehensive Low EMF Home checklist with 80 items for you to think about in the design and construction stages, and when material choices.
If you design or build homes and you want to know how the materials you choose can influence exposure levels within the home, this is something we explore in the Healthy Building Materials Mastermind.
I hope these examples give you a good sense of why it’s worth thinking about more than how ‘green’ or ‘sustainable’ a home is, and some food for thought on some key things to think about, to make sure your home supports your ability to thrive.
If you’d like to receive more healthy home related info and updated from me, you can join The Healthy Home email list here.
Reference
Goodman, N. et al. 2018. CSIRO, University of Melbourne, James Cook University, Curtin University, Menzies Institute for Medical Research. (Online). Available: https://nespurban.edu.au/wp-content/uploads/2018/11/Goodman-et-al.-2018-Indoor-volatile-organic-compounds-at-an-Australian-university.pdf [Cited: 01/12/20]