Title: Green Products In An IEQ Setting
Course: WGF 106 DEVELOPMENT > Section: Content

Image | Workforce Careers Center (Lincoln Land Community College – Springfield, IL) is a LEED Silver-certified building.
Content
Green building (also known as green construction or sustainable building) refers to a structure and using process that is environmentally responsible and resource-efficient throughout a building's life-cycle: from siting to design, construction, operation, maintenance, renovation, and demolition. This requires close cooperation of the design team, the architects, the engineers, and the client at all project stages.^[1] The Green Building practice expands and complements the classical building design concerns of economy, utility, durability, and comfort.^[2]

Although new technologies are constantly being developed to complement current practices in creating greener structures, the common objective is that green buildings are designed to reduce the overall impact of the built environment on human health and the natural environment by:

- Efficiently using energy, water, and other resources
- Protecting occupant health and improving employee productivity
- Reducing waste, pollution and environmental degradation^[2]

A similar concept is natural building, which is usually on a smaller scale and tends to focus on the use of natural materials that are available locally.^[3] Other related topics include sustainable design and green architecture. Sustainability may be defined as meeting the needs of present generations without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their needs.^[4] Although some green building programs don't address the issue of the retrofitting existing homes, others do. Green construction principles can easily be applied to retrofit work as well as new construction.

The Indoor Environmental Quality (IEQ) category in LEED standards, one of the five environmental categories, was created to provide comfort, well-being, and productivity of occupants. The LEED IEQ category addresses design and construction guidelines especially: indoor air quality (IAQ), thermal quality, and lighting quality.^[24]^[25]

Indoor Air Quality seeks to reduce volatile organic compounds, or VOCs, and other air impurities such as microbial contaminants. Buildings rely on a properly designed ventilation system (passively/naturally or mechanically powered) to provide adequate ventilation of cleaner air from outdoors or recirculated, filtered air as well as isolated operations (kitchens, dry cleaners, etc.) from other occupancies. During the design and construction process choosing construction materials and interior finish products with zero or low VOC emissions will improve IAQ. Most building materials and cleaning/maintenance products emit gases, some of them toxic, such as many VOCs including formaldehyde. These gases can have a detrimental impact on occupants' health, comfort, and productivity. Avoiding these products will increase a building's IEQ. LEED,^[26] HQE^[27] and Green Star contain specifications on use of low-emitting interior. Draft LEED 2012^[28] is about to expand the scope of the involved products. BREEAM^[29] limits formaldehyde emissions, no other VOCs. MAS Certified Green is a registered trademark to delineate low VOC-emitting products in the marketplace.^[30] The MAS Certified Green Program ensures that any potentially hazardous chemicals released from manufactured products have been thoroughly tested and meet rigorous standards established by independent toxicologists to address recognized long term health concerns. These IAQ standards have been adopted by and incorporated into the following programs: (1) The United States Green Building Council (USGBC) in their LEED rating system^[31] (2) The California Department of Public Health (CDPH) in their section 01350 standards^[32] (3) The Collaborative for High Performing Schools (CHPS) in their Best Practices Manual^[33] and (4) The Business and Institutional Furniture Manufacturers Association (BIFMA) in their level® sustainability standard.^[34]
Attributions | Image courtesy of Lincoln Land Community College (Springfield, IL) Content courtesy of Wikipedia – The Free Internet Encyclopedia