The first Healthy Building
The First Healthy Building
The first Healthy Building News for 2007 is a week late. On the eve of publication last week, our scheduled topic was rendered moot by the US EPA’s decision to prohibit the residential use of a toxic pressure treated wood formula known as ACC (acid copper chromate). Its main ingredient, hexavalent chromium, is the human carcinogen that made Erin Brockovich a household name.
The urgency of the pending EPA decision had itself bumped our original topic for the 2007 inaugural issue — highlighting the positive implications of the ambitious USGBC initiatives unveiled last November at GreenBuild. The EPA’s surprise but welcome decision brings our thesis full circle: the growing weight of the evidence suggests that the climate of the green building movement is changing, for the better.
Consider this: the US EPA did not move to restrict the use of arsenic-based pressure treated wood until nearly a decade after the green building movement’s journal of record, Environmental Building News, suggested it should be phased out.
