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Rants and raves from our board

A recent report by the American Council on Science and Health, Global Climate Change & Human Health, finds that over the past fifteen years there has been a 30 to 50 percent reduction in environmental health and well-being as measured by independently derived indicators. This report is just one of scores of analyses documenting the inextricable link between human health and environmental quality. How our homes contribute to this decline is, deservedly, gaining attention. Moreover, understanding how our homes–individually and collectively–can contribute to reversing this decline are actions that all of us can be part of. Gaining perspective on the links between environmental health and our national stock of residences is key to achieving measurable impact on the most fundamental sustaining elements of life on this planet.

In the United States, single-family residential homes represent the largest volume of construction and thus have a tremendous opportunity to turn around some of the alarming trends associated with buildings, environmental quality, and human health. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has declared indoor air quality as one of the top five environmental risks to public health. How is this? According to the EPA, many common materials used in residential construction contribute to impaired indoor air quality and, specifically, trigger asthma. Some of those materials include engineered wood products, insulation, and carpet formulated with formaldehyde; plasticizers in vinyl products such as wallcoverings, flooring, and shower curtains; and “sink” materials such as carpet and drywall. Indeed, asthma has emerged as a national and global epidemic, with a 75 percent increase between 1980 and 1994, now representing more than 17 million people and an estimated 5,300 annual deaths in the United States, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Illustrating the critical nature of this concern, consider what’s in vinyl shower curtains, according to an article in EPA’s Inside IAQ (Spring/Summer 2001). Four out of the fourteen compounds identified in shower curtains—methanol, methylene chloride, toluene, and phenol—were classified as hazardous air pollutants by the 1990 Clean Air Act Amendments.