Get The Facts - Indoor Air Quality & Toxic Building Materials

claim to be healthy are not always cost or performance competitive. I created this web site and wrote this flip-book to raise awareness and advocate for change.

HOW WE MAKE MATERIAL CHOICES

Sometimes our choices for building materials are dictated by law or code. Two examples:

 Lead pipes were MANDATED by Chicago Code for making the water connection between homes and street until 1996. I’ve never heard an explanation for why but I imagine the greater malleability of lead made it better to withstand the ground weight with less chance of breaking the home’s service line; and  Lead paints were outlawed for residential use in 1978 but perfectly legal up until then. The EPA estimates that 87% of U.S. homes built before 1940 were built using lead-based paint. Acknowledging the problem is one thing, solving it is another. In neither case have we solved the problem. Lead piping still serves hundreds of thousands of Chicago homes and lead paint is still present in many Chicago homes (though less dangerous to occupants as it has typically been covered up by layers of newer latex paint over the years). Sometimes our choices for building materials are dictated by use or functionality. The building of outdoor deck spaces and fencing comes to mind. Responding to the need to increase the longevity of the lumber used in these applications and protect against insects like termites, the building industry began impregnating their lumber with chemicals decades ago—a use of chemicals around the home that consumers don’t often think about and don’t seem to mind, but like lead piping, is still there. In fact, the process of making “pressure treated wood’ is a rare instance of self-regulation and healthier change; a process that evolved from the nasty use of creosotes distilled from coal tar, to the use of chromated arsenicals (a combination of chromium, copper, and arsenic ), to the current common day practice of treating wood made for residential construction with a less potent mix of fungicides and insecticides known as ‘alkaline copper quarternary’. This is a rare example of an industry that tried to reduce its own toxic footprint (or a more cynical interpretation, that tried to avoid regulation) resulting in public benefit. The manufacturing of these products however, continues to pose health risks to the workers who apply these coatings at the factory. Most frequently though, our choices of building materials are dictated by exactly that: our choices. Builders and consumers make conscience choices every day as they decide on the types of paints, or sealants, or caulks, or types of flooring, or insulations, or even drywall when doing a remodel or a new build. Up-front costs typically play a big role in our building material