Parson’s Healthy Materials Lab gave a talk entitled: The New Frontier of Materials: Human Health & Design that we at FutureAir believe is worth documenting.
Speakers outlined the dangers of the built environment. No one intends to pollute indoor air in building construction, but the chemical cocktail trapped inside poses an invisible threat—it is a silent epidemic.
The speakers presented a metaphor between the food we eat and the air we breathe. Just like the food we ingest, the air we breathe also becomes a part of our bodies and enters our system. So if we label the ingredients on food items should we not also label the ingredients in the air? Shouldn’t we identify where these air pollutants come from—which products, which materials? We have a right to know which items contribute to the composition of the poisonous indoor environments we spend more than 90%of our time in.
The goal of the Healthy Materials Lab is to bring awareness to the health threats posed by poor air in our indoor environments. They do this by producing and conducting case studies, and their website is pretty much an encyclopedia for all things chemical toxins in the home. Finally, they partner with companies in the construction field to incentivize healthy building material choices.
Ultimately, the chemicals of concern may never go away, but we can make and encourage better decisions that lead to healthier realities. An important point that was raised was that most members of the Healthy Materials Lab are designers in practice. They want to create beautiful environments that are also sustainable and healthy. With the current climate crisis, it seems we all have to double down and integrate a sustainable practice into our work and lives to build a world we can live and thrive in.
Written for FutureAir by Mollie Wodenshek
Image Credit: Builder Magazine