GET THE FACTS ~ Healing Homes Guru

many chemical companies refuse to disclose details. Healthier options often come at a price premium or are deficient in performance.” Bottom line? When it comes to healthy building, product info is rarely robust, some products are indeed quite toxic even if their use is not yet banned or regulated, and those products that claim to be healthy are not always cost or performance competitive. I created this web site and wrote this flip-book to raise awareness around these issues. So my advice to you if you plan to renovate or build healthy on your own, is to be vigilant about checking and corroborating manufacturer claims and use the resources I am about to give to choose the healthiest, most durable, most affordable natural material options that fit you and your lifestyle. I can tell you first hand that making these choices requires a lot of homework and usually fraught with some very hard tradeoffs, especially if one broadens my healthy home perspective beyond you and your home to also include the health of our planet. I have found a decision-making framework that beautifully guides one through this process, sourced from a group I have known for years. The group goes by the name BuildingGreen out of Brattleboro, Vermont and their framework for selecting better, healthier, and more environmentally-responsible building products is known as “The 12 Product Rules,” and I link to them here: To show you how difficult some of the tradeoffs can be, take the case of simple drywall, otherwise known as gypsum board. Gypsum, if you did not know, is a natural product mined from the earth or it can be synthetically made from treated waste gathered at coal-fired power plants. Which is the better source for gypsum? Mining it naturally seems like an obvious choice, but mining gypsum has its own environmental concerns. On the other hand, manufacturing it synthetically actually creates recycled content and diverts wastes from landfills. But that too has its own problems as the process to manufacture it can introduce mercury into the environment. It is not clear which approach is better. TRADE-OFFS

My approach is to use a different wallboard that avoids using gypsum altogether.