Green Challenge: Indoor Air Quality

One workman breaks to eat lunch while another applies flooring adhesive. Both are typical, and seemingly harmless, jobsite activities that can actually have dangerous, long-term repercussions. In fact, the ordinary remains of a lunch left by a worker, or a toxic adhesive used by a subcontractor can cause poor indoor air quality within a building for years to come.

Impact

No green building strategy has a greater impact on the health and wellbeing of a building’s occupants than indoor air quality (IAQ). The EPA estimates that Americans spend an average of 90 percent of their time indoors, where levels of pollutants may be two to five times—and occasionally more than 100 times higher—than outdoor levels.

Poor indoor air quality is often the cause of short-term illness or longer-term chronic health problems like asthma, which has now reached epidemic proportions in the United States. For example, one out of thirteen school-aged children has asthma, according to the EPA, while the California Department of Public Health reports that in California alone, close to 140,000 adults currently suffer from work-related asthma.

With poor IAQ posing such dangerous impacts, one of the most important tasks facing a project team is to develop a plan that assures clean air for a building’s construction workers as well as for its future occupants. The plan must address the project’s mechanical systems, and identify building materials—as well as their components—to ensure that they are free of toxic chemicals and volatile organic compounds (VOCs). Unfortunately, a number of these chemicals and additives, such as formaldehyde, have been used as industry standards for years.

Solution

While third-party certification systems and new industry guidelines are becoming increasingly accessible for assistance in evaluating building materials, XL Construction has found it important to also ensure that the construction process itself does not create additional problems.

Case in point: The Harker School’s new Science and Technology Building in San Jose, California. XL immediately developed a comprehensive IAQ plan for this project, which has completed construction and is in the process of applying for LEED certification. XL used the IAQ plan as a communication tool for managing the procedures of everyone on the jobsite. The plan called for:

  • HVAC protection by sealing ducts from construction dust and debris, adding filtration to keep debris from entering ductwork, and inspecting— and cleaning—ductwork prior to occupancy
  • Source control for VOCs and contaminates, barring gasoline and diesel machines from the building during construction, for example, and reviewing MSDS sheets on all materials to confirm ventilation requirements
  • Materials specification, calling for low-emitting products such as carpet, paint, adhesives, and caulking
  • Scheduling for effective sequencing to protect absorptive materials during construction, and to ensure cleaning prior to the offgassing period
  • Continuous housekeeping and the use of cleaning products with low toxicity

XL Construction used many of these same IAQ strategies in the recent renovation of its own 38,000 square foot headquarters and shop building in Milpitas, California, which was awarded LEED-CI silver certification by the U.S. Green Building Council.

"The clean, fresh air made a noticeable difference in the quality of the environment from day one," says XL Construction president Eric Raff. "The increased daylighting and improved air quality directly contribute to the productivity in our new office."

Continuing to advance knowledge about—and the capabilities to achieve— effective mechanical system design, filtration, and materials selection is critical to creating healthy environments for ourselves today and for generations to come.

For more information on IAQ best practices and initiatives, check out the following links:

http://www.epa.gov/ebtpages/airindoorairpollution.html
http://www.californiabreathing.org
http://www.healthybuilding.net
http://www.usgbc.org
http://www.usgbc.org/News/LEEDNewsDetails.aspx?ID=3193