What are the challenges in determining the environmental qualities and human health impacts of building materials or products in LEED v4 projects? (Eg: Is it the lack of supply of healthy building materials from manufacturers, owner awareness or difficulty in accessing information like HPDs and EPDs from material databases or is it something else?)
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Tiffany Beffel
Managing PartnerInnovative Workshop Consulting
LEEDuser Expert
22 thumbs up
October 12, 2019 - 12:47 pm
Hi Susan. You bring up a great question and I am wondering if you have obtained any further insight since you posted this a while back. I think it is likely all of the above things that you have referenced that make determining and obtaining environmental qualities and human health impacts of building materials difficult. We rely on the information provided by manufacturers and while industry progress is being made, many manufacturers still have a long way to go with validating compliance with key standards and being able to properly and accurately claim material attributes, benefits, and risks. I imagine it is an expensive journey to obtain proper testing and validation for thresholds required in product declarations and as I have found throughout my years in working to obtain proper supporting documentation for LEED, it isn't always readily available for consumers to find. I also think that owner awareness is a big part of the push to making the information more accessible. If owners were more aware that there are health impacts to certain products, perhaps more questions would be asked, and industry would get pushed a little harder. Regardless, this is a great question, and really THE question that is so multi-faceted and definitely requires continued conversation.