by Brianna Crandall — May 25, 2016 — The U.S. Green Building Council (USGBC) just announced a new LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) pilot credit, Building Material Human Hazard and Exposure Assessment, which encourages project teams and manufacturers to assess human health-related exposure scenarios for building materials and products during their installation and use phases.
Scot Horst, chief product officer, USGBC, explained:
LEED v4, the latest version of the LEED green building system, has begun a shift in how we think about health and building materials. We have a focus on transparency and optimization so specifiers can know what they are using and can reward innovation. But understanding how a material impacts human health requires a full understanding of hazard and exposure. The new pilot credit is a first step toward evaluating exposure by encouraging product inventories in order to prioritize decision making.
The pilot credit seeks to reward manufacturers who perform hazard and exposure assessments that can serve as a basis for developing products designed to minimize human health impacts during installation and use of the products. These assessments can, in turn, be an important consideration for alternative assessment of building materials.
By requiring exposure to be considered during product development, this pilot begins to make linkages between the product’s ingredient inventory and hazard assessment required by the existing Material Ingredients credit and performance testing required by LEED’s Low Emitting Materials credits.
The Hazard and Exposure pilot credit, developed by USGBC in conjunction with the American Chemistry Council (ACC) and its members, continues USGBC’s work to advance LEED users’ knowledge and understanding of the materials used to build and operate buildings.
USGBC’s ultimate aim is that project teams have a full and complete picture of building materials and products — all in one place — which will help enable transparent, informed decisions around important attributes of materials and products used in offices, homes, schools and other structures.
