Sustainable Development and Society - GSA

Sustainable Development and Society
potential liability issues - sometimes more
economically conservative course than
waiting for certain scientific quantification.
This paper is adapted from a presentation
by Tom Lent at GreenBuild 2004, in
Pittsburgh PA.
Isadore Possoff, “Pennsylvania Miner with Hardhat & Pick,”
GSA Fine Arts Program.
Notes:
1. Typical description states: “LCA analyzes the total environmental impact of all materials and energy flows, either as input or output, over the life of a product from
raw material to end-of-life disposal or rebirth as a new product.” Montgomery M, 2003 (Aug 20): Life Cycle Assessment Tools, Architecture Week E2.1)
2. Eutrophication is the addition of mineral nutrients to the soil or water—in this case primarily from agricultural practices used to raise the flax seed—which can
increase algae growth, which in turn can lead to lack of oxygen, impacting aquatic life.
3. Lippiatt B, 2002 (October): BEES 3.0 Technical Manual and User Guide (NISTIR 6916) (Gaithersburg, MD: NIST), p. 27.
4. Vinyl Institute, 1998 (December): Environmental Attributes of Vinyl: Vinyl Flooring Comes First in Life-cycle Assessment. EnVIronmental Briefs.
http://www.vinylinfo.org/environment/briefs_12_98.html.
5. Thornton J PhD, 2002: Environmental Impacts of Polyvinyl Chloride Building Materials (Washington DC: Healthy Building Network), p. 28.
6. US EPA, Office of Research and Development, 2001 (May 25): Information Sheet 1, Dioxin: Summary of the Dioxin Reassessment Science.
7. US EPA 2001 (March): 2001 Database of Sources of Environmental Releases of Dioxin like Compounds in the US (EPA/600/C-01/012), pp. 1-37, 1-38, 6-9.
8. Lippiatt, BEES 3.0.
9. Analysts from linoleum manufacturer Forbo have done their own internal LCA’s and assert that the factor for eutrophication from linoleum used in BEES is two
orders of magnitude (100X) too high and suspect a misunderstanding of functional units may have contributed to the error. If the current BEES eutrophication
category value (.0454) is reduced by 99%, the total environmental impact of linoleum drops from .0521 to .0071, flipping the results. Linoleum ends up beating VCT with
only 55% of the measured environmental impact—even before having accounted for all of VCT’s dioxin-related flows.
10. Lundgren B et al., 2002: Small Particles Containing Phthalic Esters in the Indoor Environment—A Pilot Study, Proceedings: Indoor Air 2002, p. 153.
11. Norris G et al., 2003: Indoor Exposure in Life Cycle Assessment: A Flooring Case Study (life cycle assessment. Unpublished paper, Harvard School of Public
Health, quoted in Floorcoverings: Including Maintenance in the Equation, Environmental Building News 12, no. 5: 12.
12. Lent T, 2003: Review of the California 1350 Specification and Indoor Air Quality (Washington DC: Health Building Network).
13. US EPA, 2000: Ozone Depletion Rules & Regulations: The Accelerated Phaseout of Class I Ozone-Depleting Substances (Washington DC: US EPA); US EPA,
1979 (Apr 19): EPA Bans PCB Manufacture, Phases Out Uses (press release).
14. US EPA, 2001: Persistent Organic Pollutants (POPs); UNEP, 2000: Persistent Organic Pollutants (United Nations Environment Programme).
15. The task of identifying chemical hazards and screening out materials choices for environmental and human health and safety will be an ongoing one. Complete
basic publicly available toxicity information (the Screening Information Data Set, or SIDS) is available for less than 10% of the roughly 2,800 high-production-volume
chemicals (those produced in volumes over one million pounds per year). No toxicity information at all is available for more than 40%. Even less is known about the
tens of thousands more chemicals that are produced in smaller volumes or for any of these chemicals in combination with each other. US EPA, Pollution Prevention
and Toxics Division, 1999 (March): Chemical Right to Know—Frequently Asked Questions (EPA 745-F-98-002f); Lowell Center for Sustainable Production, 2003:
Integrated Chemical Policy (Lowell, Mass.: University of Massachusetts–Lowell), 2.
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