Details

Green Construction Series: Choosing Safe & Sustainable Materials Using the Pharos Material Evaluation Tool

Jun 18 2010 – 01:00 PM Eastern

This webinar will last approximately 90 minutes.

Topic

The Healthy Building Network’s Pharos Project offers a new tool to help architects and designers and others evaluate building products for environmental, human health, and social justice attributes. Working with 18 large health care systems and design firms, HBN piloted the system in 2009 and will release the tool to the public at GreenBuild in November.

Pharos includes a building product library, showing products that have been evaluated in four key areas: user toxicity, manufacturing and community toxicity, use of renewable materials, and use of renewable energy.

Pharos also offers a searchable Chemical and Material library (CML), which locates in one place more than 9,000 chemicals, including those identified by authoritative bodies, such as IARC, NTP, and Prop. 65, as “chemicals of concern.” The CML is an important tool for folks working to source healthier products, as well as those working on chemicals policy and on environmental justice issues.

Objectives

• Attendees will gain knowledge on how to use the Pharos building product library to evaluate building products

• Attendees will learn the variety of ways to use the Pharos Chemical and Material Library to screen chemicals and materials that are in products.

Presenters

• Julie Silas, Healthy Building Network
  
  Email: jsilas@healthybuilding.net   Telephone: 510-594-8270
  
  

  Julie Silas is the Director of Health Care Projects for the Healthy Building Network. Ms. Silas joined HBN in 2007 after serving for many years as the Program Director for SF Bay Area Physicians for Social Responsibility where she earned high regard as an expert in the field of environmental health and environmentally preferable purchasing criteria. She works with leading health care systems throughout the country, facilitates the Global Health and Safety Initiative’s Building Materials Subcommittee, and is a consultant to a number of health care systems on green building materials projects. She is a member of Kaiser Permanente’s High Performance Building Committee and has co-authored a number of fact sheets and white papers on materials used in health care, including the “Future of Fabric.” She was formally a Steering Committee member of Health Care Without Harm and co-chair of their Safer Materials workgroup.

• Jennifer DuBose, LEED AP , Georgia Institute of Technology
  
  Email: Jennifer.Dubose@coa.gatech.edu   Telephone: 404-385-6232
  
  

  Jennifer DuBose has over 15 years experience working with a range of different types of organizations to tackle an array of sustainability challenges. With an understanding of system dynamics paired with a keen eye for detail, she is able to analyze systems to identify gaps and opportunities for improving sustainability and then build processes and tools to support successful implementation of best practices. She has authored numerous peer-reviewed journal articles, several book chapters, and has been an invited speaker at national and international meetings. Ms. DuBose has worked on sustainability within a variety of contexts from large corporations such as Interface, Inc. and Coca-Cola, government agencies such as Air Force Reserve Command and the Military Health System, international non-governmental organizations to smaller local organizations working to improve our community. Her areas of expertise include green building strategies, greenhouse gas accounting and offset development, sustainable agriculture and evidence-based design for healthcare.

Webinar speakers have no financial or other interest in the sponsoring company and the sponsor has had no input into the content of the presentation.

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