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Blogs

Take an inside look into emerging markets and trends. Gain valuable new perspectives from HBN experts and our partners. Be inspired to know better.

Pharos research path leads to most polluting facility in country: US Magnesium

James Vallette | March 15, 2013 | Materials

Flying over the Great Salt Lake, en route to last year’s Greenbuild, I spied a massive industrial facility above the lake’s southern flank. It was a surreal mix of briny discharge ponds and bronze stacks of smoke and slag.  Of course, I wondered what this was. This week, I came upon this plant again, in the normal course of doi...


Removing Arsenic from Building Materials: A Success Story

Bill Walsh | March 12, 2013 | Materials

March 17th marks the 10th anniversary of the EPA order that made it illegal to use the arsenic-based pesticide CCA (chromated copper arsenate) to treat wood intended for most residential uses, including wood destined for decks, picnic tables, landscaping timbers, gazebos, residential fencing, patios, walkways and play structures. This is also a hap...


Air Pollution Control Boosts Mercury Levels in Coal Ash

James Vallette | March 01, 2013 | Materials

In previous Pharos Signal articles and Healthy Building Network newsletters, we have examined the use of coal power plant waste in building materials.  Over the past dozen years, fly ash became a low-cost way for building product manufacturers to incorporate LEED recycled content credit-friendly filler in a range of materials, like carpet ba...


Building Interiors an Important Source of Endocrine Disrupting Chemicals to Children

James Vallette | February 25, 2013 | Materials

An exhaustive study by the World Health Organization / United Nations Environment Programme fingers building materials as major sources of endocrine-disrupting chemicals (EDCs), and calls for the disclosure of chemical contents in products: “(O)ver the past decade it has become clear that humans, in particular small children, are… expo...


Seeking PBT-free Silicone Sealants

James Vallette | February 01, 2013 | Materials

Today, the Pharos Project released a new “common ingredients” record, this one for silicone adhesives and sealants. Silicones affix and seal many materials to buildings, from carpet backing to window framing. In the course of this research, we identified two ingredients of particular concern: cyclosiloxanes and organotin catalysts....


Another industry front against chemical safety exposed

James Vallette | January 30, 2013 | Policies

A new voice you might be hearing in green building policy debates should sound familiar to the careful listener. An examination of comments and actions authored by an organization called the Taxpayer Protection Alliance (TPA) finds close parallels to testimony from the American Chemistry Council (ACC), which has been working hard, behind-the-scenes...


The Google Healthiness Machine

Bill Walsh | January 24, 2013 | Policies

For the fourth year in a row Fortune magazine has named Google the best company in America to work for. Slate technology columnist Fahrad Manjoo attributes this success to a relentless data-driven campaign to attract and retain the best employees in the ultra-competitive field of software engineering.[1] He calls this: The Google Happiness Machine....


Leadership in Advocacy

Bill Walsh | December 11, 2012 | Policies

Last month at the Greenbuild Conference and Expo, my colleague Tom Lent and I were honored to accept the 2012 Leadership in Advocacy Award from the US Green Building Council on behalf of the incredibly dedicated staff at the Healthy Building Network.

HBN is a non-profit organization that receives the vast majority of its income through grant...


Draft LEED Material Credit needs your comment by Dec 10 midnight PST

Tom Lent | December 02, 2012 | Policies

(updated 12/09/12) The USGBC has taken a huge step forward to address toxics in building materials in the most recent draft LEED standard that is now in public comment. The credit called “MRc4 - Building product disclosure and optimization - material ingredients” rewards product  transparency to inform product selection and enc...