Are Green Buildings Healthy Buildings?

As sociologists interested in the ways green communities and green buildings benefit health, we tend to focus on the benefits most obvious to us as sociologists: Things like access to green space and nature, sharing resources, community-mindedness and localism. We've been less focused on the nuts and bolts of the buildings themselves, their materials and inner-workings. To be honest, we've probably been overly naive in our assumptions that green buildings themselves must be good for health: if they're good for the health of the environment, they must be good for human health, right?

Well, maybe not.

A new report from Environment and Human Health, Inc. criticizes LEED and other green building certification programs for failing to include health as an important part of what it means to be green. Thousands of different chemicals, many of them known to be hazards to human health, become components of building materials and LEED does little to ensure that they are kept out. What's worse, by virtue of their energy efficiency, LEED-certified buildings that include dangerous chemicals in their building materials may actually increase our exposure to toxins. One of the factors that makes green buildings green is the fact that they have tighter envelopes compared to other buildings and this may create intensified exposures to toxins if they are present in building materials. The report also criticizes LEED for failing to include strong assurances of safe, quality drinking water and for not restricting the use of pesticides in landscaping or ensuring that they don't seep into groundwater.

The reports strongest critique, however, is reserved for the US federal government which has failed to protect public health through strong testing and regulation of chemicals used in everyday life.

Hazardous chemicals have become components of LEED-certified indoor environments primarily due to the failures of the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA) and EPA’s neglect of the problem. Congress has provided EPA with limited authority to require testing of likely hazardous chemicals in building products. Thus new products may incorporate tens of thousands of untested chemicals with no government oversight.

The report ends with recommendations for improving LEED by giving more weight to those aspects of buildings that effect health.

Healing and Natural Disasters

There's an important link between sustainability and community healing after natural disasters. This is a link we are exploring in our new book, tentatively titled Healing Green. Beyond the way devastating destruction holds the promise of regeneration and the implicit opportunity to rebuild in a new and innovative way, we think that rebuilding sustainably after natural disasters serves an important healing function for the communities most effected.

We are thinking a lot about this promise of healing as we grieve for the thousands upon thousands of people who have lost their lives, their families, and their communities in Haiti. It's hard to find words to describe the magnitude of such loss and easy to feel helpless as we watch on our television screens, donating money to organizations we hope can help ease some of the suffering. And though against the backdrop of such urgent need, it's hard to imagine a future in which rebuilding will be the focus, such a future will come and we are heartened to see efforts already underway to incorporate green community practices into the rebuilding effort.

The Clinton Foundation has been working with Haiti to "build back better" in the aftermath of the hurricanes that battered the country in 2008 and plans to continue that effort when rebuilding begins this time. The USGBC is working with the Clinton Foundation in these efforts and they will look to, and learn from, the experiences of other communities that are rebuilding green after being crippled by natural disasters. Communities such as Greensburg Kansas which was virtually demolished by a tornado in 2007. The town decided to rebuild as a model green community. Check out the Greensburg Green Town website to learn more. A significant portion of the recovery effort in New Orleans has also looked toward green building principles and practices as they rebuild.

We think it is of crucial importance to build social sustainability into the recovery efforts in Haiti--as the poorest nation in the Western hemisphere, much of the current devastation can be linked directly to poverty and injustice. Without building codes or adequate infrastructures, with a public health crisis in existence even before the earthquake, the damage is much greater than it might have been had this disaster struck somewhere else. And in order to answer the promise of building back better, economic and social injustices will have to be addressed along with environmental ones. As we write about the rebuilding of communities in our book, we will continue to look for lessons about how incorporating social sustainability into rebuilding can help heal the wounds wrought by natural disasters.