Recycling building materials (for instance, saving the doors during a retrofit) helps too. New products I understand, but what about antiques or vintage items?One of the best arguments for incorporating vintage pieces in design, apart from saving space in landfills and decreasing carbon emissions, is that they are far safer from an off-gassing perspective. It’s a nice companion to product and strategy advice at certification bodies such as GreenGuard, WELL, and the Living Building Challenge. One of the most promising is Mindful Materials, a constantly updated, searchable library of more than 10,000 products with verified labeling information. Luckily now, industry-wide databases are evolving to help.
How do I know if the products I source off-gas?Contaminant-wary designers like Thompson in Denver and Jennifer Jones of Niche Interiors in San Francisco have spent years compiling their own personal spreadsheets of safer products (especially nontoxic adhesives and stain treatments) and vendors (especially installers) who share their off-gassing concerns. And any living creature who spends a lot of time near the floor (where flooring and carpets-in addition to their backings or adhesives-off-gas) is at higher risk, especially babies, toddlers, and household pets. Adults with weak immune systems or respiratory problems often exhibit stronger responses to off-gassing. Who is at risk?All of us, but especially babies and school-age children, whose physiological systems are still in development. Sick Building Syndrome is less common now, but airtight structures (think tall glass towers) are at higher risk than buildings with operable windows.
Severe air quality problems shut down an Illinois drivers license center in 2015. There have been cases where toxic chemicals became so infiltrated in a building’s walls, floors, and HVAC system that a simple “airing out” couldn’t fix it. Here’s a list of the worst offenders and their potential impacts. Prolonged exposure can cause headaches, respiratory illnesses, hormone disruption, and a variety of cancers.
But of course, some fumes are more toxic than others, and the chemicals from plastics and adhesives tend to be the worst. What are the dangers?Chemical companies will tell you that everything off-gasses, that pineapples and roses are off-gassing. But many products or materials continue off-gassing even after the “new smell” has gone away-the fumes are just much more subtle. It happens the most when a product is new. Whenever you smell a product, it’s off-gassing. So what is off-gassing, anyway?Super-simply, it’s the airborne release of a chemical, a chemical in vapor form.
So, how do you get a handle on what’s happening here, and what are the best strategies to reduce emissions that can trigger asthma, cognitive impairment, or worse? We asked that question of professional air quality accessors, experienced sustainability managers, and green-minded designers around the country, collecting their current wisdom on tools, measurement techniques, and simple tactics that can protect clients from invisible airborne poisons. We need to be doing right by our clients.”ĭesigners have, of course, been aware of the dangers of volatile organic compounds (VOCs) for a long time, and have helped influence some wins in the marketplace, like the rising popularity of low- or no-VOC paints and the 2015 ban Home Depot and Lowe’s instituted in 2015 on toxic phthalates (a class of industrial chemicals that help make plastic bendy) in flooring.īut the problem endures, and unfortunately, many of the worst effects of VOCs-showing up in health conditions-accumulate over long periods of time.Īccording to Susan Inglis, executive director of the Sustainable Furnishings Council, a coalition of industry professionals dedicated to safer, greener home furnishings, “We’re learning more now and the news is discouraging-harmful chemicals are persistent and linked directly to health problems, and we can keep using them forever! The chemical lobby is very powerful in this country and they don’t want to be regulated, that’s why. “It’s up to us to understand the individual effects each chemical can have on your nervous system, your lungs, and your cellular makeup.
“Nobody’s telling you what is coming from all those vapors mixing in the air,” says Jillian Pritchard Cooke, the founder of Wellness Within Your Walls, an education consultancy focused on dramatically reducing the dangers of off-gassing in the built environment.