Healthy Building Network

Projects

Greening Health Care

With "first do no harm" as the most fundamental precept of the profession, health care organizations are well positioned to ensure environmental health is a key component of sustainability. They can lead the building industry in designing and constructing buildings in ways that enhance health; reducing the impacts on patients, staff, the community, and the environment; and, sourcing materials that do not contain chemicals linked to illnesses such as cancer, reproductive problems, learning disabilities, hormone interference and respiratory problems.

The Healthy Building Network works with the health care industry to enable these institutions, architects, designers, and other specifiers to utilize their buying power to transform the market toward healthier and more just building materials. To that end, we have served as a consultant to Kaiser Permanente as the healthcare system has undertaken efforts to positively impact the building materials market. We are one of the leaders in the Global Health and Safety Initiative's built environment work group, working with a coalition of hospital systems, architects and designers, governmental and non-governmental organizations to move toward more environmentally responsible building materials.

Our health care project team is available to provide support and guidance to health care institutions, architects, designers and others who strive toward the same goals. When needed, our staff is available for public presentations, individual fee-for-service consultation and technical support.

• Learn more about HBN's Heathcare work

• Learn more about HBN's work in California

Evaluating Materials - The Pharos Project

Through informed specification and selection of building materials, we can measurably enhance the environmental, human health, and social benefits associated with the contemporary building industry, and contribute towards the future we want our children to inherit - a socially just society, free of toxic byproducts, in balance with the natural world.

For two years, HBN has been developing Version 1 (V.1) of the Pharos Project (www.pharosproject.net). Our long-term goal for Pharos is to become the leading materials evaluation tool for the building industry as a means of transforming the building materials market toward products that are superior from an environmental, health and social justice standpoint. Over the next two years, our goal is to establish Pharos first as the building materials selection tool of the nation’s largest health care systems, and then to develop strategic partnerships and alliances that allow us to bring Pharos up to a scale that can serve the entire building industry.

• Learn more

Healthy Building News

In February 2004, HBN launched its Healthy Building News as a semi-monthly opinion column offering perspective on matters of topical interest to green building professionals. Healthy Building News is now an influential voice in the green building movement and has inspired greater participation in important policy debates within the green building movement.

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Why I Support HBN
		Penny Bonda HBN Board Member Penny Bonda, FASID, NCIDQ, LEED AP is a monthly contributor to Interior Design magazine's online resource, The Green Zone.
I believe that this organization plays an important and constructive leadership role in the green building movement. The key to their success is the financial independence that they gain from supporters like you and me.

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