How our buildings are making us sick - asthmagens etc

[Guest guest]

How our buildings are making us sick.

<http://www.forbes.com/sites/amywestervelt/2012/08/08/how-our-buildings-are-maki\

ng-us-sick/>

As a culture, Americans spend 90 percent of our time indoors, and in the

majority of cases the air quality inside is far worse than it is outside.

The largely terrible indoor air quality is attributed to the offgassing

of chemicals from various building materials--paint, carpet,

countertops, dry wall, you name it and chances are it's got some sort of

toxic ingredient. The thing is, in many cases those chemicals are

mandated by either building codes or performance codes. Curtains need to

be covered in flame retardant to prevent fire spread, for example, and

certain other materials have chemicals added to them in order to make

them more flexible, more rigid, or more rugged.

Today, architecture firm Perkins + Will released a report

<http://transparency.perkinswill.com/assets/whitepapers/NIH_AsthmaReport_2012.pd\

f>

looking at just one aspect of this dilemma: asthmagens in the built

environment. The report compiles the bulk of the peer-reviewed research

available on the subject, and the result is a single document that

illustrates the problem, the gaps in the research, and the potential

solutions. The report concludes....

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