October 12, 2009

Construction Corner | Korky Koroluk

Building green has health benefits

With all the worries about energy efficiency, environmental degradation and climate change, most of us overlook the everyday health benefits that go with working in a green building.

A decade or so back, there were lots of articles about sick buildings.

People complained about headaches, sore throats, dry skin, a general feeling of malaise, all caused, they thought, by the poor indoor air quality they were forced to endure on the job.

Scientists took their complaints to heart.

As a result, we got better air, better light, better temperature control, and better health. It’s been years since I’ve seen a news story about a sick building.

Now Rick Fedrizzi, president of the U.S. Green Building Council, wants more emphasis placed on the health benefits of green buildings.

He told a recent conference of the International Society of Indoor Air Quality and Climate (ISIAQ) that the creation of healthy indoor environments is the best single public-health program possible.

“People heal faster in green hospitals, they are more productive in green offices, they have fewer accidents in green factories and learn better in green schools,” he said.

But despite that, he said, indoor environmental quality ranks near the bottom of any list of American policy issues.

He called for more research to demonstrate the links between health and indoor air quality.

“I’m convinced we could ignite new interest in the design and construction of buildings if we turned up the volume now on the health benefits that building green delivers,” he said.

Much work remains to be done, and Fedrizzi is in an ideal position to turn up the volume. The amazing level of acceptance of LEED adds credibility to just about anything green building advocates have to say.

Business leaders’ eyes have stopped glazing over when green building is mentioned, he said, because they are beginning to understand the economic advantages.

The ISIAQ is no association of fuzzy-headed academics. It’s an international, independent, multi-disciplinary group that includes scientists, of course, but others as well.

Among its membership you’ll find government and regulatory professionals, medical practitioners, occupational health professionals, building owners and managers and environmental lawyers.

You will also find architects and engineers of various building disciplines, including air-conditioning engineers. All these people, all these disciplines, are working to support the creation of indoor environments that promote the health, comfort and productivity of building users.

The need becomes obvious when you visit the website of Syracuse University’s Centre of Excellence in Environmental and Energy Innovation.

There you will read that deficiencies in indoor environmental quality (IEQ) are estimated to cost the American economy between $40 billion and $258 billion annually in lost worker productivity. That same poor environment causes a variety of health problems affecting between 30 million and 70 million Americans.

Canada’s population is about a tenth that of the U.S., so divide those figures by 10 to get a rough guess at the size of the problem here.

The group Fedrizzi addressed was meeting in Syracuse to mark the opening of a new building to house the centre of excellence. It is, as you might expect, a LEED Platinum building, with space for the centre’s environmental partners as well as laboratory space. But the building itself is also a testbed for all manner of environmental technologies.

It’s the sort of facility we need more of as environmental concerns of all kinds grow in tandem with concerns about energy and climate change.

It will help move the science of indoor environmental quality ahead. And it will help get the message of green building out to the industry and to the public at large, helping everyone realize the benefits of going green.

Korky Koroluk is a regular freelance contributor to the Journal of Commerce. Send questions or comments to editor@journalofcommerce.com

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