Creating Healthy Learning Environments

Identifying and removing toxic hazards from educational buildings
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Sponsored by Forbo Flooring Systems
Peter J. Arsenault, FAIA, NCARB, LEED AP
This test is no longer available for credit

Connections to Mold and Mildew

As noted, the EPA has identified that up to half of our nation's schools have problems associated with the growth of mold and mildew created by damp indoor environments. The Healthy Building Network, an organization dedicated to transforming the market for building materials to advance the best environmental, health, and social outcomes, confirms that the presence of mold and mildew caused by standing water or damp conditions in school environments increases the risk of chronic allergies and asthma among children. They note that this moisture can further accelerate the emission of hazardous chemicals into the air from building materials—all increasing the risk of serious health consequences for the children, teachers, staff, and community members who use these facilities.

Selecting products that do not promote mold or mildew and that have some antimicrobial characteristics helps to overcome health issues associated with asthma and the spread of infectious disease.

Photo courtesy of Forbo Flooring Systems

Selecting products that do not promote mold or mildew and that have some antimicrobial characteristics helps to overcome health issues associated with asthma and the spread of infectious disease.

Connections to Infectious Bacteria

In recent years, there has been an awareness of the need to control the spread of infectious bacteria in many institutional settings, including schools. Staphylococcus aureus, often referred to as “staph,” are bacteria commonly found on the skin or in the nose of healthy people. Approximately 25 to 30 percent of the population are colonized with staph bacteria (i.e., carry the bacteria without becoming ill). Sometimes staph causes minor skin infections (e.g., pustules, small boils) that can be treated conservatively, without antibiotics. However, on occasion, staph bacteria can cause much more serious skin infections, as well as bloodstream infections, pneumonia, etc.

Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) is a type of staph that is resistant to some antibiotics, including the antibiotic methicillin. Infections caused by MRSA have historically been associated with ill persons in healthcare institutions. However, MRSA has now emerged as a common cause of skin and soft tissue infections that may occur in previously healthy adults and children who have not had prior contact with healthcare settings.

This type of MRSA infection is known as community-associated MRSA (CA-MRSA) and can be transmitted from person to person through close contact. Risk factors associated with the spread of MRSA include direct skin-to-skin contact with colonized or infected persons (non-intact skin serves as a point of entry for the bacteria), sharing contaminated personal items (e.g., towels, razors, soap, clothing), inadequate personal hygiene, direct contact with contaminated environmental surfaces, and living in crowded settings. CA-MRSA infections are treatable; early recognition and good medical management, including, as needed, surgical drainage and proper antibiotic prescribing and use, help to ensure prompt resolution of infections.

Recently, there has been an increase in the number of outbreaks of CA-MRSA skin and soft-tissue infections reported at the national level. Outbreaks of CA-MRSA have occurred among student athletes, especially participants in contact sports (e.g., football, wrestling) and sports where participants are prone to skin abrasions. The most important approach to preventing MRSA transmission is through simple measures such as good personal hygiene, and covering infections. However, the environment may play a role in some cases of MRSA transmission when surfaces are touched or used by multiple people. Routine surface cleaning, utilizing an EPA-registered disinfectant cleaner, of frequently touched surfaces and surfaces that come into direct contact with people's skin, such as shared athletic equipment (e.g., wrestling mats and strength training equipment) can certainly help. In order to be effective, mats and other high-use athletic equipment should be cleaned before and after each practice and several times a day throughout a tournament.

Transparency: Determining Healthy Products

Given the extent and range of potential issues and impacts from school environments, how does a design professional know what to specify? There are industry standards such as the Resilient Floor Covering Institutes FloorScore IAQ and the Collaborative for High Performance Schools (CHPS) Section 01350. However, these measure a product's VOC emissions as tested in a dark chamber with a controlled temperature of 75 degrees F (23 degrees C). But scientific studies have found that even a 10-degree C increase in temperature raises toxic VOC emissions from products such as PVC almost tenfold. That means that products that pass a standard in a laboratory may be failing in real world applications.

Realizing the limitations of a single test, there are some recently developed alternatives that a specifier can request and rely on in order to make informed choices on the materials being used in buildings. Three are summarized as follows:

Environmental Product Declaration (EPD)

An environmental product declaration (EPD) is a document created by a manufacturer to show the results of a life-cycle assessment (LCA) performed on its product(s) in accordance with ISO standards. Before being published, the EPD needs to be verified and approved by an independent entity such as UL Environment (ULE) or the Institute for Market Transformation to Sustainability (MTS). The fully vetted EPDs thus enable everyone involved to make accurate direct comparisons of the environmental strengths and weaknesses of similar products, thus providing a degree of transparency in terms of the environmental impacts of using different building products. Many in the green products industry regard the EPD to be a standardized tool used to communicate the environmental performance of a product. It works in the same way that a nutrition label on a food product informs us about the fat, sugar, and cholesterol in the foods we eat. However, while providing adequate disclosure of environmental impacts, an EPD does not address toxicity potentials or human impacts associated with the products.

EPDs play a notable role in LEED® version four which was released in 2013. The Materials and Resources (MR) section has substantial revisions compared to prior versions such that points previously available for regional materials and recycled content are being rolled into the points available for LCAs and EPDs. Happily, the USGBC is not asking project design teams to conduct LCAs or to become LCA experts. Instead, the project team will be able to request an EPD that discloses the required LCA-based information. In essence, LEED® version 4 asks product manufacturers to gather the life-cycle information on their products and to disclose relevant portions of that information in the standard EPD format.

Health Product Declaration (HPD)

Going beyond disclosure of life-cycle impacts of products, attention has been given to the toxicity of those products on the natural environment (ecotoxicity) and people (human toxicity). In response, a group of leading architects, building managers, and product manufacturers have banded together to create a whole new standard called the Health Product Declaration (HPD), which represents a major step forward in product transparency. HPDs build on and incorporate the data from the EPD but go on to combine it with trustworthy and verifiable measures of ingredients that impact ecotoxicity and human toxicity. As such, it creates a disclosure document that truthfully indicates the toxicity impact of a product on the people who live with it, and the natural environment that it exists within. As envisioned, the HPD will create a single standard that can be used to create an apples-to-apples comparison of products based on their ingredients.

The true beauty of the HPD is its ability to be impartial, while also addressing industry concerns about the fairness of standards. To remain objective, HPDs use an open-source approach to decide which criteria are included, placing decision-making power in the hands of architects, specifiers, and others without a vested interest in the outcome. On the one hand, radical environmentalists cannot unduly sway the standard but neither can industry insiders with a status quo to protect. All professionals can have input in shaping the standard to keep it practical and fair. Admittedly, it is difficult to measure the absolute potential for future toxicity without a crystal ball. But if judgments must be made, it is a far better idea to have everyone in the product safety equation at the table sharing all the information available. It is far better for human health and our natural environment as well.

The USEtox program identifies a more complete view of the toxicity of a building product and displays it in simple, familiar ways.

Image courtesy of Forbo Flooring Systems

The USEtox program identifies a more complete view of the toxicity of a building product and displays it in simple, familiar ways.

The USEtox Model

USEtox is a scientific consensus model for characterizing human and eco-toxicological impacts of chemicals in a life-cycle impact assessment. It is a Life-Cycle Initiative jointly created by the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP) and The Society of Environmental Toxicology and Chemistry (SETAC). UNEP participates through its Sustainable Consumption and Production Branch (SCP) which promotes resource efficiency by encouraging sustainable consumption and production patterns. Its activities aim to reduce environmental impacts and help meet human needs by producing more with less. SETAC is a not-for-profit, global professional organization comprised of some 6,000 individual members and institutions from academia, business, and government. Since 1979, the Society has provided a forum where scientists, managers, and other professionals exchange information and ideas on the study, analysis and solution of environmental problems, the management and regulation of natural resources, research and development, and environmental education. The USEtox model has been developed by the USEtox Team, a team of international researchers from the Task Force on Toxic Impacts under the auspices of UNEP/SETAC Life Cycle Initiative.

The premise of the USEtox program is similar to an HPD but with a different output on a product including a database of factors such as environmental fate, exposure, and effect parameters for human toxicity and ecotoxicity. Essentially, it allows a label to be developed that is similar to a nutrition label for food. Instead of listing things like vitamins, fat, and fiber information however, it lists summary ecotoxicity information, human toxicity information (cancer and non-cancer), and complete ingredients all of which can be built from EPDs and HPDs. Most of us prefer to buy food knowing what is in the product and how it affects our health—the USEtox program strives to provide the same information for building products.

 

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Originally published in Architectural Record
Originally published in March 2015

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