December 10, 2008

Construction Solutions Conference

Not all ‘green’ buildings are healthy buildings, expert says

BRIAN MARTIN

correspondent

VANCOUVER, BC

Green buildings, which often receive a lot of positive publicity, might not all actually be as healthy as they seem, according to one industry expert who doesn’t want to see history repeat itself.

“Not all green buildings have good indoor air quality,” Elia Sterling, president of Theodor Sterling Associates of Vancouver told delegates to the Construction Solutions Conference, many of them contractors or architects. “While the intent of sustainable building certification programs like LEED is sound and innovative, there are a few flaws.”

Sterling, whose company has been in the business of providing indoor environmental services for 35 years, said he is concerned there is a perception that because a building is certified green, people assume it is a healthy building when, in fact, it may be a sick one.

LEED certification is often used as a gauge. It is a points-based system, but it is up to builders and designers to decide which particular points they choose to pursue when seeking certification.

“As a result, it is possible for a building to be LEED certified without actually verifying that air quality objectives have been met,” Sterling explained. “That, combined with the fact that no re-certification is required after a building is initially certified as a LEED-accredited building, lends itself to a situation that could result in poor indoor air quality.”

In other words, even if a building has good air quality on opening day, there is no guarantee it will be better than any other building six months down the road when various sources of contamination, such as furniture, printers and photocopiers, have been moved in.

Sterling quickly pointed out he wasn’t saying people should assume that all LEED buildings have poor air quality, but raises it as a potential problem.

He is worried the industry, and the country, may be in the process of making the same sort of mistakes they made in the 1970s and 1980s. Back then, pushed by government energy policies, buildings were made more air tight than they had ever been before.

At the same time, an entire range of new synthetic materials were being used and they introduced volatile organic contaminants into the air — contaminants such as formaldehyde.

The result was a well-documented outbreak of Sick Building Syndrome. Many improvements followed, often involving HVAC systems. Sterling is worried the industry may be heading down the same dangerous road.

“For buildings being constructed now and in the future, new ventilation and thermal comfort standards have been adopted in North America in an attempt to reduce the effects of climate change,” he said.

The new standards have lowered ventilation requirements and eroded thermal comfort requirements.

“For example, the new standards allow temperatures in some commercial building to meet almost 32 degrees C,” said Sterling.

Sterling said while progress has been made in the operation of buildings to provide indoor air quality solutions, he wondered if in the rush to embrace energy efficiency programs and to reduce green house gas emissions the indoor environment is being ignored, just as it was in the 1980s.

“Are we headed rapidly back to the past, without having learned anything?” he asked.

Print | Email | Comment