Tips for Building Healthy Home – Part 1: Minimize VOCs Minimize Exposure to Formaldehyde Formaldehyde is one of the most common industrial chemicals and is widely used as a component of building products, upholstery, carpeting, etc. and classified as a human carcinogen. Formaldehyde’s other health impacts include respiratory problems; eye, nose, and throat irritation; allergic

Healthy Building News from GreenBuild 2012 More than 30,000 attendees from across the world swarmed into San Francisco for this year’s international GreenBuild conference. The conference is hosted every year by the US Green Building Council, and it’s by far the largest green building conference in the US. GreenBuild is, by default, mostly LEED-centric, but

Healthy Building Science Green Festival – San Francisco The Healthy Building Science Green Festival  booth two weekends ago was a total hit! After the Green Festival we all took a big breathe and dove right into festivities and events for GreenBuild 2012… now we await the air quality results. It’s been an amazing 10 days. The

PART 1: Residential Wiring Problems Caused by Older or Mis-Wired Systems As a former carpenter and electrician, I have seen and worked with a lot of building wiring, both residential and commercial.  As an inspector I have seen many residential wiring errors and problems caused by older or improperly designed or installed electrical systems. Let

Tips for Building a Healthy Home If you are building a new home or significantly remodeling your existing home, then this article will help you target the biggest polluters in your home’s indoor environment. These tips for building a healthy home have been put together with the intent of helping those who do not have

Flame retardants creeping you out… For years a small (but growing) group of concerned scientists, designers, and public health advocates have been warning about the dangers of flame retardants. It may seem counterintuitive that flame retardants – intended to reduce risk of harm from fire – could be harmful themselves. However, according to many of

Toxins in Household Goods are the current norm. With the growing buzz concerning toxins in building materials and a push for more transparency, where can consumers turn? The answer:  Not enough places. Several factors contribute to this lack of information on toxins in household goods. One lies in the sheer number of ingredients involved. Significant

EMF Measurement and Mitigation in the Bedroom was an abstract written by Alex Stadtner and submitted to the National Environmental Health Association (NEHA) for their Annual Educational Conference (AEC) & Exhibition in the “Be the Voice” program.  EMF Measurement and Mitigation in the Bedroom The electrification and digitalization of our society has lead to our

“Building Envelope Commissioning” or “Building Enclosure Commissioning” The terminology is so new we’re not sure which term will stick… so we’ll start with what we like. “Envelope” sounds more lovely than “enclosure.” “Building Envelope Commissioning (BECx) comes to the San Francisco Bay Area” For centuries we’ve understood air infiltration and moisture intrusion waste energy and

At Healthy Building Science we provide three primary services revolving around healthy building materials. 1) Bulk material testing. We cover this briefly in another blog post. 2) Building material research. Sometimes our clients are particularly interested in toxicity or resource conservation. Some clients concerned about climate change are asking for carbon footprint analysis in order