LEED Label Challenged

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by Melinda Tuhus | Jun 3, 2010 8:34 am

(6) Comments | Commenting has been closed | E-mail the Author

Posted to: Environment

Melinda Tuhus Photo If you live or work in a LEED-certified “green” building, can you assume it’s healthy for humans?

Not necessarily, according to a report just issued by a local health organization.

The report from New Haven area-based Environment and Human Health, Inc. (EHHI ) is called “LEED Certification: Where Energy Efficiency Collides with Human Health.” It comes as green buildings are springing up around the country, especially in New Haven, for its small size.

LEED is an international standard used to brand buildings as environmentally friendly.

New Haven has 12 LEED-certified buildings, three of which are the highest-rated platinum, which may be more than any other city of comparable size. (Boston, a much bigger city, has only two platinum-rated buildings.) Click here to check out LEED buildings by city.

One of New Haven’s is 360 State Street, an upscale apartment tower with ground-level retail that is scheduled to open in August.

EHHI President Nancy Alderman (pictured) said the public assumes such buildings are not only good for the environment, but good for those occupying them. LEED stands for Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design.

She noted the certification process offers a total of 110 points in seven categories.

“If you get to 80 points, you can be ‘Platinum,’ which is their very highest rating, and you can totally leave out, if you choose to, the indoor environmental quality, because that’s 15 points.”

The glossy, 72-page report is in line with others the group has produced in the past covering such topics as diesel exhaust from school buses and phthalates in consumer products, all with a view to impacts on human health.

EHHI is made up of nine environmental and health experts. It receives all its funding from foundations, not government or business.

The LEED categories include energy and atmosphere, sustainable sites (minimizing impacts on ecosystems), indoor environmental quality, materials and resources, water efficiency, innovation in design, and bonus credits. The points are heavily weighted toward energy efficiency and clean energy, accounting for 35 percent of total points.

The report says as structures become tighter and thus more energy-efficient, there is more danger of locking in pollutants such as off-gasing from various kinds of plastics. “No law in the United States requires labeling of chemical ingredients in plastics, and their use is not restricted in LEED-certified buildings. Plastics now comprise nearly 70 percent of the synthetic chemical industry in the U.S,” it states.

The report also raises questions about water quality, not just water efficiency, and the presence of pesticides, stating, “There is no legal requirement to inform occupants about the chemicals that have been applied, their potential health effects, or their rate of dissipation.”

Alderman said another concern is that until recently, the board of the U.S. Green Building Council—which administers the LEED certification program—included not a single health expert.

As with all EHHI’s reports, this one makes specific recommendations to remedy the problems it identified, such as putting more health experts on the Green Building Council board and requiring that builders earn a minimum number of points in each category.

Scot Horst, vice president of the U.S. Green Building Council, said he had not yet had a chance to read the whole report, but he got the impression that the objections therein were based more on theory than practice. “In practice,” he said, “it’s almost impossible to earn a platinum rating without addressing indoor air quality. In order to even get to the point where you could achieve points, you have to meet the prerequisites, and there are prerequisites in the Indoor Environmental Quality section.”

Alderman said they are too few and too weak. In an email, lead author John Wargo addressed two examples of what he called inadequate prerequisites.

The first covers “ventilation rates.” “The solution to pollution is not dilution, as the ventilation standards suggest,” Wargo argued. “The true solution is to avoid bringing the hazardous chemicals into the built environment in the first place. Ventilation, natural or forced, often is inadequate to meet the chemical challenges posed by building materials, cleaning materials and furnishings. “

The second permits smoking in “designated smoking areas,” Wargo wrote, a professor of risk analysis and environmental policy at Yale’s School of Forestry and Environmental Studies. “The EHHI report sufficiently references the conclusions of the U.S. Surgeon General and the American Society of Heating, Refrigerating, and Air Conditioning Engineers (ASHRAE), that ventilation systems cannot eliminate secondhand smoke. Anyone who grew up in a household of smokers understands that it is impossible to eliminate the secondary smoke from clothing, furnishings, walls, drapery, and other porous surfaces such as wood.”

Horst said that even though work in some of the categories may seem contradictory (i.e., promoting energy efficiency by making a building tight, which could worsen indoor air quality), “when you do LEED you’ll find they actually work with each other, to work with all the different ideas to come up with a better building overall.” He added, “Energy efficiency is not good if it’s hurting people,” so LEED promotes both efficiency and good ventilation.

“The [EHHI] report is right on target,” said 360 State Street developer Bruce Becker,. “We took indoor air quality very seriously.”

He spent an additional $100,000 to get wood cabinets and doors that had not been treated with the preservative formaldehyde, he said.

“It off-gases and that’s a problem; a green building tends not to breathe as much as traditional buildings; if you have a tight building that doesn’t allow any air movement, it’s poisonous.” He said the project is also using extremely low VOC paints. And, once it’s open for occupancy, “We’ll make sure all cleaning products, maintenance and landscaping products are non-toxic. We specified low-maintenance plants; we don’t normally use pesticides in any of our projects. If weeds appear, they are pulled by hand.”

Paul Bass Photo “You can score well in LEED and not do well in every category, but it’s pretty hard to get to Platinum and not pay attention to indoor air quality issues,” 360 State’s Bruce Becker (pictured) said, echoing Horst’s comments. “I think it’s a good report. There may be some categories in the next version of LEED that address these concerns. The report could definitely contribute to that. [LEED] is an imperfect, evolving standard.”

Comments

posted by: Mr. Jacky on June 3, 2010 9:07am

Why do people think LEED is associated with people’s health?

Have they forgotten about asbestos insulation? Asbestos insulation, as a building product, is an excellent insulation and terrific for keeping heat in your home. It’s *only* downfall is that it is harmful to your health.

So energy efficiency and public health are NOT the same thing. C’mon people, an eighth grader could figure that out from simple science class.

posted by: Jonathan Hopkins on June 3, 2010 12:50pm

The modern public health movement was started in New York City by city planners, architects and landscape architects, not doctors or scientists. As the city planning profession became increasingly bureaucratic and less design-oriented, our built environment became immensely unhealthy to inhabit, which was enabled by this country’s enormous wealth in the middle of the 20th century that allowed us to make extremely stupid decisions that could be masked with more and more money and energy, but has since caught up with us as energy production peaks and capital loses value.
LEED is flawed because it allowed for green Walmart’s to be developed, which is a complete joke. Fortunately, this mistake is being addressed through LEED ND, which takes into account not only buildings, but also transportation, land use efficiency, accessibility, etc.
In order to have an environment that is healthy to inhabit and aesthetically pleasing, we must put the city planning profession back into the hands of architects and urban designers so that a better set of zoning and codes can be written to demand good planning principles instead of requiring unhealthy sprawl developments. LEED is essentially just another patch to address the core issue of terrible zoning and codes that are fundamentally flawed.

posted by: Stephanie Steinberg on June 4, 2010 10:33am

There is NOTHING acceptable about allowing people
to light up cigarettes in a “green” building.

The USGBC is pro tobacco, pro cancer and
pro sick buildings!

They certify projects that are approved for smoking!

No one should ever believe that these LEED buildings
are safe for the occupants. The USGBC is
a sell out!

Secondhand smoke has 4,000 chemical compounds, 50
of which cause cancer!

posted by: Josiah Brown on June 4, 2010 1:15pm

The lead author of the study, John Wargo, is quoted above.

Also author of the book “Green Intelligence,” John Wargo has led several seminars in which public school teachers have participated as Fellows through the Yale-New Haven Teachers Institute and its National Initiative.

For example, he led a 2008 seminar on “Urban Environmental Quality and Human Health: Conceiving a Sustainable Future”:
http://www.teachers.yale.edu/curriculum/index.php?url=http://www.yale.edu/ynhti/nationalcurriculum/units/2008/7/

He also led a 2009 seminar on “Energy, Climate, Environment”:
http://www.teachers.yale.edu/curriculum/index.php?url=http://www.yale.edu/ynhti/nationalcurriculum/units/2009/7/

These seminars produced volumes of curriculum units teachers wrote—resources that are available for non-commercial, educational purposes.

posted by: Eli Meyer on June 10, 2010 1:30pm

One of the biggest challenges with green building is evaluating all of the trade-offs required to meet all of is design objectives.

I feel that the USGBC has done a good job developing a program that helps people understand the environmental AND health issues associated with buildings.

Many of the issues brought up in this article are based on source control of indoor air pollutants, many of which are products associated with the operation of the building, not in the actual building products. If you look at the various certification programs offered, you will see that the issues brought up in this article are not ignored by LEED. Most importantly, you have to understand the different certifications and what they are intended to do. For example LEED (for new construction) awards credits for reducing or eliminating pollutants released from the actual building products (like paints, carpet, wood products, etc.) LEED for existing buildings focuses on building operations, awarding credits for using non-toxic products in the operation and maintenance of the building.

It sounds like the EHHI is just bitter that LEED buildings aren’t perfect. Reading their arguments cited in this article, it appears that they are upset that certified green buildings aren’t 100% safe and healthy and they feel that the public is being deceived. The reality is that outdoor air is almost always much cleaner than the air in ANY building. The EHHI should focus their efforts on educating the public about the importance of spending time outside, not criticizing peoples efforts in making buildings less toxic.

posted by: Jack Kagan on June 17, 2010 8:54am

For Stephanie Steinberg: LEED certifies building not any products.

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