ABSTRACT
As discussed in Chapters 10 and 11, market forces and current practice work against the development of healthy buildings, ensuring that the vast majority of buildings are con structed using hazardous petrochemical-based materials. It is hardly surprising that poor IAQ is commonplace in modern buildings if there is little regulation to limit or exclude hazardous materials from buildings. This is unlikely to change unless there are significant policy and legislative shifts and much greater awareness among professionals and the general public about healthy building issues. Much of the work to underpin this has been done, particularly in the European Union, but it is not being applied as effectively as it might be in pioneering countries like Germany and France. In the UK and Ireland, this work is largely being ignored. The current debate as to whether the UK should leave the EU will have been resolved by the time this book has been published. If the UK were to leave the EU and remove much European legislation from the UK statute book, as has been suggested, then what little environmental protection currently exists could be done away with. This would be a frightening prospect. While there are problems with EU policies and rules, some of which are discussed below, on balance, EU environmental legislation has had a positive effect.
