ABSTRACT
How Universal Can It Be If It’s Not Green? How Green Can It Be If It’s Not Universal? 309
Cradle to Cradle: Remaking the Way We Make Things 309
A Question of Design 309
Ecology House 310
Funding 313
Site Selection 314
Design and Construction 314
Cost 315
Residents 318
Healthy Home Standard 320
What Is Building Biology? 320
The 25 Principles of Bau-Biologie 320
The Healthy Home Standard for Conventional Construction 321
Information Summary Sheets 321
Lead Paint 321
Asbestos 322
Mitigation Options 322
Indoor Air Quality Checklist 322
Formaldehyde and VOCS 322
Mold 322
Carbon Monoxide 323
Guidelines 323
Ventilation 323
Electromagnetic Radiation 323
What Is EMR? 323
pH Living 324
Take It for a Test Drive 325
What Comes Standard in Our pH Living pureHOME? 326
A Universally Designed Academia 326
Common Chemical Concerns 328
California 01350 and Indoor Air Quality 328
Materials Screening Components 329
Healthy Indoor Air for America’s Homes 330
Indoor Air Quality Health Effects 330
Not So Sexy: The Health Risks of Secret Chemicals in Fragrance 332
About the Environmental Working Group 332
About Environmental Defence Canada 333
Executive Summary 333
Secret Chemicals 333
Sensitizers 333
Hormone Disruptors 333
The Self-Policing Fragrance Industry 334
Safer Products and Smarter Laws 334
Be Just Beautiful 334
Achieving Clean Indoor Air 335
Poor Air at Home 336
What Makes Good Air? 336
The Right Tools 336
Safe Rooms 337
The Objective 337
REGREEN Residential Remodeling Guidelines 2008 338
ASID 338
US Green Building Council 339
Background 339
Whole-House, Systems-Thinking Approach 340
A Focus on Professional Integration 340
Green versus “Good” Design 340
Dealing with Climate and Site 341
What the REGREEN Guidelines Are, and What They Are Not 341
Project Case Study 342
Follow Individual Strategies into the Strategy Library 342
The Water Supply 342
References 342
Connie Barker of the Environmental Health Network has been a long time advocate for sustainable designs, including both green and Universal Design. Green, or more accurately, sustainable design, has increasingly become an important concern in many realms, but particularly so in the design of the built environment. Over the last 15 years, standards and codes for designing and maintaining buildings, and for conducting building operations in ways that optimize energy efficiency, conserve resources, utilize recycled materials, improve indoor environmental quality (IEQ), and lessen the carbon or ecological “footprint” of those living or working in them have proliferated. Some of the better known standards include the US Green Building Council’s LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) program, Canada’s Green Globes Program, The Green Guide for Hospitals and Healthcare Program (embraced by Kaiser Permanente and other large health care providers), and Build It Green’s Green Points Rated Program. The reasons for such growth are obvious. Concern with global warming, constantly rising energy costs, reports of “sick buildings,” and the negative impacts that some modern built environments have on the health of their occupants, along with general concerns regarding dwindling resources, growing landfills, and models of growth and resource consumption that are clearly not sustainable at current rates, have all combined to create widespread concern that the design and maintenance of the built environment be brought into alignment with growing ecological knowledge and concerns. But very little has been done relating the growing body of knowledge regarding such sustainable design to basic principles of universal design.
