BuildingWell Episode 6 Transcript

00:00:00

Music plays

00:00:02 Kristin Glossner

There’s a lot of risk factors in a building that can contribute negatively to our health, so a healthy building basically considers these risk factors and minimizes the negative health impacts to the occupants. So the goal is to choose healthier materials, but also to design and construct the building so we are promoting health as this is our number one goal.

00:00:23 Michelle Moran

Welcome to BuildingWell, Sustainable Homes, Equitable Communities, your new podcast from New Ecology. Join us as we explore real life stories from key players in green building and community development. We’ll examine exciting new innovations, highlighting practical solutions for creating more affordable, healthier, more resilient, equitable communities. We’re building well, together.

00:00:48 Molly Craft

This episode was made possible by the Mass Save Community Education Grant.

00:00:54 Michelle Moran

Hello and welcome to the BuildingWell podcast, your favorite podcast for information about sustainable, equitable communities. My name is Michelle Moran, and I’ll be your host today, along with my co-host, Alina Michelewicz.

00:01:05 Alina Michelewicz

Hello!

00:01:06 Michelle Moran

We’re joined here today by Kristin Glossner, and she’s going to be talking about healthy buildings and the impact of buildings on occupant health and safety.

00:01:13 Michelle Moran

This is going to be a great conversation. So without further ado, let’s get healthy. Welcome, Kristin.

00:01:19 Kristin Glossner

Hi, it’s great to be here. I’m excited to talk about healthy buildings today.

00:01:23 Michelle Moran

Me too.

00:01:24 Michelle Moran

All right. So, Kristin.

00:01:27 Michelle Moran

Could you please introduce yourself and give a little bit of information on your background?

00:01:31 Kristin Glossner

Yeah. So I’m Kristin and I pretty much knew from a young age that I wanted to be a part of the building industry. I would draw pictures of cities and buildings and amusement parks when I was younger, so this was pretty much the field that I knew I wanted to get into ever since I was a little girl. So when it came time to pick a career path, I chose construction science and management, and I worked as an.

00:01:51 Kristin Glossner

Intern and part time employee for a big commercial contractor in Kansas. So I was working on schools and then the K State Memorial football stadium. I graduated from Kansas State University with my Bachelor of Science and Construction Science and Management.

00:02:04 Kristin Glossner

And from there I secured a full-time job with the commercial contractor that I was.

00:02:07 Kristin Glossner

Working with.

00:02:08 Kristin Glossner

I started out as a project engineer and then ended up as a project manager. After a couple of years and I worked mainly on projects in the western Kansas area. Some of these projects included assisted living facilities, long term care facilities, schools, museums and even some pre con work for a zoo.

00:02:24 Alina Michelewicz

I want to hear more about that one.

00:02:25 Kristin Glossner

Yeah, that was a lot of fun.

00:02:28 Kristin Glossner

Around this time I started getting into sustainability and healthy buildings because I realized that the construction industry didn’t really utilize these principles that often, at least not in the region that I was working in in Kansas. So I ended up getting another job opportunity to come back to the East Coast, which is where I grew up and help develop sustainable and healthy building and city products at a semiconductor.

00:02:49 Kristin Glossner

Technology company. So I moved back up and I really started getting into the topics of healthy and sustainable buildings and cities.

00:02:55 Kristin Glossner

When I was working at the technology company, I spent a lot of time focusing on building standards specifically for healthy and green buildings, and I also spent a significant amount of time focused on circadian lighting as well, and the health benefits associated with this form of lighting. This is essentially lighting that mimics the spectrum of the sun, and I actually have gotten a patent for one of my technologies I contributed to in this area.

00:03:16 Kristin Glossner

Which is pretty cool.

00:03:18 Alina Michelewicz

Wow.

00:03:18 Kristin Glossner

Yeah, it was. Yeah. A lot of work. It’s great to see that patent out there. So at the same time, I went back to Graduate School and got my Master of Engineering and sustainable smart cities from the University of Alabama.

00:03:28 Kristin Glossner

Birmingham, as well as a Master of Science and Sustainable smart cities from Staffordshire University, which is in England, and a couple of months after I graduated, I found New Ecology and that has allowed me to pursue my passions in this field of work as a project manager, so I also have a range of certifications. I’m a WELL AP, a Certified Passive House Consultant, a LEED AP, and a LEED Green Rater.

00:03:49 Kristin Glossner

And this list is likely to continue to grow, and last in addition to working at New Ecology, I’m also an adjunct professor that teaches sustainability courses.

00:03:57 Alina Michelewicz

That’s cool. I didn’t know that. What exactly

00:04:00 Alina Michelewicz

Is construction science and management?

00:04:03 Kristin Glossner

Construction science and management.

00:04:05 Kristin Glossner

Is essentially project management work for the construction industry. So like a lot of the contractors that we work with personally out in the field, I would be the one in the field as a project manager focusing on the budget and the schedule and the purchasing.

00:04:23 Alina Michelewicz

I didn’t know.

00:04:23 Alina Michelewicz

That was like a degree you can get.

00:04:25 Kristin Glossner

Yeah. So a lot of it was technical construction information like learning a lot about buildings and the processes and the construction industry.

00:04:33 Alina Michelewicz

Cool. That’s cool.

00:04:36 Michelle Moran

Impressive! So Kristin, with your Masters degrees and the work that you’ve done, you were working for a long time on a thesis. Could you describe about your thesis, the topic and how it connects to health and health in buildings?

00:04:47 Kristin Glossner

Yeah. So I spent a significant amount of time in Graduate School studying healthy buildings and healthy cities. I also spent a lot of time in the green buildings and green cities area. But healthy buildings was really my passion. So my research regarding my thesis consisted of a literature review where I discussed different studies and research surrounding different topics related to healthy buildings.

00:05:07 Kristin Glossner

My absolute favorite topics in the realm of healthy buildings would have to be building material health and

00:05:13 Kristin Glossner

Biophilic design, but I also focused a lot on building related illnesses, sick building syndrome, as well as aspects like indoor air quality, lighting , day lighting, thermal health, active design, acoustics and the spread of transmissible diseases inside buildings.

00:05:29 Michelle Moran

Very topical from the past five years or so.

00:05:31 Kristin Glossner

Yeah, definitely.

00:05:33 Michelle Moran

So.What is a healthy building, Kristin?

00:05:35 Kristin Glossner

OK, so here’s my long winded.

00:05:38 Kristin Glossner

Response to that, so,

00:05:40 Kristin Glossner

Research tells us that we spend about 90% of our time indoors. So the indoor environment has a direct impact.

00:05:46 Kristin Glossner

On our health and the concept of unhealthy buildings is not new, so this concept goes back to when Cavemen were building indoor fires and exposing themselves to harmful smoke. This topic has been addressed throughout history, and mainly due to also poor living conditions and pollution in urban areas, which led to the modernist architecture movement, and that focused a lot on promoting health within the built environment.

00:06:09 Kristin Glossner

This focused on reducing crowds and disease.

00:06:12 Kristin Glossner

And promoting holistic design techniques that utilize aspects like air, sun and light. So basically a healthy building aims to minimize the negative health effects that are typically associated with traditional structures. Traditional structures, they have many different categories of risk factors and this might include mold, bacteria, dust, toxic chemicals.

00:06:32 Kristin Glossner

In products

00:06:33 Kristin Glossner

During construction, which could be insulation, paint, coatings, plasticizers, asbestos and lead, radon, even household products like cleaning products, other toxic chemicals that we might find in products could be the VOC contents or even tobacco smoke.

00:06:49 Kristin Glossner

So there’s other risk factors including indoor air temperature and humidity, which is a part of thermal comfort. Also, noises and vibration, ergonomics, and universal inclusive design. So there’s a lot of risk factors in a building that can contribute negatively to our health. So a healthy building basically considers these risk factors.

00:07:08 Kristin Glossner

And minimizes the negative health impacts to the occupants. So the goal is to choose healthier materials, but also to design and construct the building. So we are promoting health as this is our number one goal.

00:07:20 Michelle Moran

Wow, slightly off topic, but what is a VOC?

00:07:23 Kristin Glossner

A volatile organic compound.

00:07:25 Michelle Moran

And we find those and things like carpets and paints and things like that? Interesting.

00:07:27 Kristin Glossner

Yes.

00:07:29 Alina Michelewicz

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Interesting.

00:07:33 Michelle Moran

So Kristin, we talked a lot about so far what a healthy building is and how we might go about making buildings healthy. What is a sick building?

00:07:41 Kristin Glossner

So a sick building is when you get sick from your building.

00:07:47 Kristin Glossner

There’s something called sick building syndrome, and it can manifest in many different ways, and there’s a lot of research on sick building syndrome. Unhealthy buildings may lead to dryness and irritation of your eyes, nose, throat and skin. Sick building syndrome may also consist of headaches, dizziness, fatigue, nausea, brain fog, sensitivity to odor, smells and taste.

00:08:07 Kristin Glossner

In addition to sick building syndrome, there’s actually building-related illnesses that can develop due to poor indoor environmental

00:08:13 Kristin Glossner

Conditions and these might include asthma, dermatitis, infectious disease transmission. Those are just some examples. I’ve also personally had my own experience dealing with sick building syndrome in my own home, so I had toxic black mold in my house that was hidden behind baseboard in my downstairs bathroom, and I started having all these symptoms dizziness, brain fog.

00:08:33 Kristin Glossner

Fatigue, sensitivity, and these symptoms lasted a significant amount of time, so I was consistently going to doctor’s appointments and getting tests done and I had a small child at home with me, so I wanted to make sure that I was checking out everything and considering the indoor.

00:08:47 Kristin Glossner

Conditions in my home, and when I got a mold remediator and I learned pretty quickly about poor conditions hiding in the basement bathroom that was contributing to my sickness in my home.

00:08:58 Michelle Moran

Wow, I can’t imagine if you didn’t have this expertise that you have that might have taken 10 times longer.

00:09:04 Michelle Moran

To figure out, more than that.

00:09:04 Alina Michelewicz

Or never.

00:09:05 Kristin Glossner

Yeah, I think a lot of my research and the fact that I had been learning a lot about healthy buildings at this time helped me identify that right away. And I started examining my home rather than just trying to keep doing all these tests to figure out what was wrong.

00:09:19

Me.

00:09:20 Alina Michelewicz

Wow. Yeah. Do you guys want to hear a house Horror Story?

00:09:21 Kristin Glossner

I’d love to hear it

00:09:21 Alina Michelewicz

The basement is so moldy that I am afraid to put an air purifier in it because I don’t have to clean the filter of the air purifier because.

00:09:40 Alina Michelewicz

Then I’d be having like exposure to so much mold. So instead I’m just going to like, ignore the basement.

00:09:46 Kristin Glossner

Definitely don’t ignore the basement.

00:09:48 Kristin Glossner

Definitely try to get somebody in who can help with the water getting inside the building and then remediate that mold.

00:09:56 Kristin Glossner

Is not good for you.

00:09:58 Alina Michelewicz

It’s—I don’t want to go into it. It’s really bad. I’m terrified.

00:10:06 Michelle Moran

So Kristin, how can building materials relate to building and occupant health?

00:10:12 Kristin Glossner

Yeah. So building materials are a major factor of health in the built environment. This is one of my favorite topics to talk about, and there are so many different pathways for exposure. For example, one of them is volatilization, which is when substances and materials off-gas.

00:10:26 Kristin Glossner

So basically the chemical changes into a gas and releases into

00:10:29 Kristin Glossner

The air and is commonly occurs with different wet applied products like paints, sealants, coatings, composite wood materials, and insulation, and these materials release volatile organic compounds, also known as VOC’s, into the air. There are also semi volatile organic compounds, also known as SVOC’s, and they have a similar off gassing process as VOC’s.

00:10:50 Kristin Glossner

That they evaporate at a slower rate, materials that contain plasticizers typically have this effect, another pathway for exposure occurs when a material breaks down and releases new compounds and chemicals, so this can occur from a material being scratched, for example, and dust or small particles getting

00:11:07 Kristin Glossner

Into the air, they can enter the body in different ways, so this might be ingestion. If you touch a contaminated surface and get dust on your hands, or this can be through inhalation as well. So it’s also important to note that the risk of exposure can happen at any time in the material’s life cycle, so this might occur during the raw material extraction and the manufacturing process as well as the.

00:11:28 Kristin Glossner

Construction and installation.

00:11:30 Kristin Glossner

And even to the end of life and the recycling of the material, an example of building products causing a negative impact to health would be materials and products that contain ingredients that contribute to asthma. So these substances and ingredients are found in coatings, finishes, spray foam, board insulation, flooring and carpet adhesives.

00:11:50 Kristin Glossner

Paint window frames, siding, composite wood. A lot of different materials.

00:11:58 Kristin Glossner

And children specifically are very vulnerable to these exposures and these ingredients and research shows that it can actually impair the respiratory and immune system development. So there’s one example. Another example would be formaldehyde, which is dangerous too. It’s a carcinogen that is found in wood based products, drywall and paints.

00:12:18 Kristin Glossner

VOC’s also give off a range of health issues.

00:12:22 Kristin Glossner

And then also some products can contain endocrine disruptors and impact the nervous system and reproductive system as well. There’s a lot of conversation about lead and asbestos. We know a lot about lead and the impact it can have to particularly young.

00:12:42 Kristin Glossner

Children who are still developing lead can stay in your body for a very long period of time, and it can be found in roofing materials and windows and plumbing products.

00:12:50 Kristin Glossner

And asbestos, which thankfully it’s banned in most countries now, but it’s pretty well known for its negative health impacts as well, and it’s found typically in older buildings and here at New Ecology we work a lot in older buildings and rehabbing them, so it’s found in older buildings and was used to reinforce building materials and protect from fire.

00:13:11 Kristin Glossner

In products like roofing tiles, vinyl flooring, adhesives and paints, and this can lead to lung diseases and workers can actually bring it home. And if they get dust that sticks to their clothing or shoes it can expose their family.

00:13:28 Kristin Glossner

So we want to avoid unhealthy materials in the home and we want to prioritize our health and set ourselves up for good health. There are products and building materials that are starting to come out on the market that don’t have harmful ingredients in them, and many manufacturers are becoming more transparent about the ingredients in their products. So we are able to make informed decisions.

00:13:48 Kristin Glossner

As customers and make sure that we’re picking products for our homes and buildings and aren’t negatively impacting us.

00:13:53 Michelle Moran

Wow, so that’s crazy. So it seems like from what you’re saying, like you said, we know about asbestos, we know about lead, but it’s almost everything that we use to build our homes or put in our homes or decorate our homes might have some sort of risk.

00:14:06 Kristin Glossner

Pretty much, yeah. Traditional buildings and the products and materials we put in them are not good for our health.

00:14:12 Alina Michelewicz

So what can people do?

00:14:14 Alina Michelewicz

What kind of research can you do?

00:14:16 Kristin Glossner

Pretty much, just make sure that we’re using products that are transparent with the ingredients that they’re using.

00:14:24 Kristin Glossner

When we’re considering healthier and more sustainable materials in our homes and buildings, the first thing that we can do is check out the manufacturers website and look at the SDS, which is also known as the safety data sheet.

00:14:36 Kristin Glossner

However, a best practice for making sure we’re choosing healthier building materials is by checking to see if there’s any third-party certification or reporting. So there are a couple of sustainability reporting tools that manufacturers use to provide transparency about their products.

00:14:52 Kristin Glossner

Two of them that come to mind are the health product declarations and declare labels. They provide information on the products’ ingredients so you can see if there are any chemicals or other ingredients that are of concern also. Alternatively, you might see if a product or material is third party certified. This would allow you to look at if they have low chemical emissions for example.

00:15:13 Kristin Glossner

And there are a bunch of third-party certifications out there, including Green Guard, and this applies to furniture and flooring building materials.

00:15:22 Kristin Glossner

There’s Floor Score and this applies to flooring, materials and adhesives. There’s also Green Label Plus, which considers carpet, cushions, adhesives, and there’s also Cradle to Cradle certification, which takes a look at the life cycle of the product to make sure it’s meeting strict health and sustainability standards.

00:15:41 Kristin Glossner

So this might include material health, making sure the product is contributing to a circular economy, that they’re reduced impacts to the environment during manufacturing, that natural resources are protected and that companies are committed to human rights and equity.

00:15:56 Kristin Glossner

There’s also lots of resources online to find materials that have low VOC content or no formaldehyde, for example. So we can kind of shop around when we’re doing something as simple as a home renovation maybe, so that we’re considering better materials in our building.

00:16:15 Michelle Moran

Interesting. So basically you can do it, but you have to you have to be on top of it, you have to research a bit,

00:16:19 Kristin Glossner

Yeah.

00:16:20 Alina Michelewicz

does improve ventilation also help? Does that help with VOC’s?

00:16:24

Or is it like there?

00:16:24 Kristin Glossner

It does, but I would always advocate for source control.

00:16:29 Kristin Glossner

So make sure that we’re getting rid of them at the source, or at least reducing it as much as possible.

00:16:36 Michelle Moran

Do you know if there’s any like website where you can search for VOC free paint for example or something like that? Or is there no central resource just yet?

00:16:45 Kristin Glossner

I would say to check the labels and use manufacturers that have.

00:16:50 Kristin Glossner

The ingredients listed out and are transparent because they’ll tell you what’s in their products. There’s materials for different certifications that have Red List items and Red List items, or essentially materials that we don’t want in our buildings. And like, sometimes you can go onto a manufacturer’s website.

00:17:11 Kristin Glossner

And find flooring for example, and make sure that all the items on the Red List all the materials on the Red List are not included in that building products. So I think transparency is key. You just have to kind of do your research a little bit.

00:17:26 Alina Michelewicz

So that’s one of the benefits of a healthy building certification then is the materials that are used in the first place.

00:17:32 Kristin Glossner

Yes, yes, that’s true.

00:17:35 Michelle Moran

Wow. So on that connection that Alina just made there, Kristin, are there specific green certifications that are for health or connect to health? Do you have experience in this?

00:17:43 Kristin Glossner

Yeah. So there are quite a few building certifications that address health. The first one that comes to mind is the WELL building standard. So this certification focus on aspects.

00:17:52 Kristin Glossner

Like air quality, water quality, lights, movement and promoting like that physical health aspect, thermal comfort, which is temperature and humidity, acoustics, materials and also your mind and mental health, as well as nourishment, which is the access to healthy foods. There’s also another healthy building certification

00:18:12 Kristin Glossner

Called Fit Well and this uses evidence-based design to address health behaviors in the built environment. There are strategies related to community health, safety well-being morbidity reduction, along with encouraging physical activity and providing access to healthy food options.

00:18:28 Kristin Glossner

There’s another certification called Reset, which uses data collection and technology to monitor materials, air quality, water, energy and circulatory like waste monitoring. So these are the healthy building certifications.

00:18:45 Kristin Glossner

Many of the green building certifications that are common in my line of work include LEED.

00:18:50 Kristin Glossner

Enterprise Green Communities, also known as EGC, Passive House and the Living Building Challenge. LEED and Enterprise Green Communities, have a significant amount of credits and criteria that utilize to help our buildings become healthier.

00:19:03 Kristin Glossner

So and then there are credits related to low VOC materials, which is a pretty common credit that a lot of my project teams go for, especially as we have more airtight buildings. It’s important that we consider the indoor environment with these healthier materials.

00:19:18 Kristin Glossner

EGC also has criteria that is focused on healthier building materials and considers the ingredients in the products beyond the VOC content. This is also pretty common with the Living Building Challenge as well. They list out certain ingredients that are banned from the products that we can use, to add to that, EGC.

00:19:37 Kristin Glossner

Also has a lot of criteria that aims to promote physical activity as well as healing and inclusive environments, which are also part of the healthy building realm.

00:19:47 Michelle Moran

So some of these are about healthy materials and building healthy buildings and some of them even incorporate other elements of health like physical activity or what did you say access to healthy foods and things like that?

00:19:58 Kristin Glossner

Yep.

00:19:59 Michelle Moran

That is really great.

00:20:01 Molly Craft

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00:20:08 Molly Craft

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00:20:40 Molly Craft

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00:20:46 Molly Craft

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00:21:06 Molly Craft

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00:21:10 Molly Craft

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00:21:30 Molly Craft

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00:21:44 Michelle Moran

What about mental health?

00:21:45 Kristin Glossner

Yeah, so buildings don’t just impact our physical health, but they can also impact their mental health as well. One aspect related to healthy buildings that directly relates to mental health is biophilic design and views to the outdoors. There are a lot of studies that show that there are many well-being benefits to nature specifically.

00:22:03 Kristin Glossner

Reduce stress, improve sleep.

00:22:05 Kristin Glossner

Overall happiness improvements and satisfication with life and then increased social connectedness. So the concept of biofield design is to bring nature inside, and it’s said to have a similar impact in buildings utilizing biophilic design techniques, we might see natural lighting. We might see colors that are found in the natural environment.

00:22:25 Kristin Glossner

Water features, we might see plants or have natural ventilation, day lighting, or circadian lighting which.

00:22:32 Kristin Glossner

Is the lighting that mimics the sun’s natural spectrum that I was talking about a little bit earlier. We may have natural sounds or natural patterns and shapes that are frequent in nature. And then there’s also some concepts about the cultural connection to the area as well. Studies have shown that biophilic design can help with productivity is a big one.

00:22:52 Kristin Glossner

Overall increase in cognition reducing stress also helping enhance mood, reducing fatigue and also reducing sick building syndrome, as well as creating relaxation and positive emotions and occupants.

00:23:05 Alina Michelewicz

I have a.

00:23:06 Alina Michelewicz

Side anecdote. And so I went to this place in upstate New York in Irvington, and it was an ocatagon house. Have you heard about octagon houses?

00:23:17 Kristin Glossner

I don’t think so.

00:23:18 Alina Michelewicz

It’s like it’s an octagon shape, obviously. And the idea is that there was better air flow because you’d have windows on eight sides that could open. And one of the things that they talked about when we did a tour of this House.

00:23:28 Alina Michelewicz

That they had all gas lighting at that time. It was like the late 1800s or early 1900s. And so people would like, actually hallucinate.

00:23:36 Alina Michelewicz

Tonight cause the indoor air would be like just the gas fumes. And so this idea of like the Octagon House was so that there’d be more air coming in. And so you’d be healthier. And then also that you’d have more views to be outside, but it was just kind of an interesting thing of, like, well, they were really thinking about this like, back then, it wasn’t. It was like a really hot thing.

00:23:56 Alina Michelewicz

And then it like fades out. So there’s like Octagon houses a few places. There’s a really good 99% Invisible podcast about it, yeah.

00:24:03 Michelle Moran

We’ll link that in this. I’m fascinated by this idea of bringing nature inside because, as you said, some people are spending what’d you say, 90% of our lives indoors now.

00:24:12 Michelle Moran

Especially if you’re in a large multifamily building, really do improve your mood and you said they they improve air quality, indoor air quality, all that sort of stuff, so.

00:24:20 Alina Michelewicz

Right, and remembering COVID when everybody was getting plants, yeah, it was like you were in your house all the time. And you’re like, I need nature. Like you could.

00:24:28 Alina Michelewicz

Feel that you needed it? Yeah.

00:24:31 Michelle Moran

Thank you for that great overview about how materials affect the health of the building and the occupant health and mental health, which is a whole other important aspect. What about specifically about vulnerable populations, for example, how do building conditions affect seniors living in multifamily housing, for example?

00:24:47 Kristin Glossner

Yeah, so unhealthy building conditions are particularly harmful and a risk factor for vulnerable populations, so this may include those with chronic health conditions, children or even seniors. So with seniors, because they are more at risk, it’s extra important for us to consider healthier materials in our buildings, and eliminate the harmful ones. For example, the prevalence of.

00:25:08 Kristin Glossner

Asthma for older individuals is actually pretty similar to those who are younger, but older adults have a higher mortality from it, so it’s important to consider healthy homes and buildings that reduce products that have ingredients that lead to asthma. We also want to consider reducing dust and dander to avoid the trigger of athsma.

00:25:25 Kristin Glossner

Beyond that, in multifamily housing, it’s important to have a walkable space, particularly green space outside for seniors to help them stay active, but also be used as a restorative environment. And it’s also important to note that considering healthy buildings and multifamily senior housing can contribute to reducing the spread of transmissible.

00:25:45 Kristin Glossner

Diseases and illnesses. So we saw a lot of the impacts of illnesses being spread around to seniors, particularly with the COVID-19 pandemic and healthier buildings will aim to reduce the spread of these illnesses and keep the senior population healthier. And then last, with the extreme weather events and heat events.

00:26:03 Kristin Glossner

Rising, and how they will continue to do so in the future, we need to make sure that thermal comfort is an important aspect in senior multifamily homes as well and thermal comfort is another aspect that’s really focused on in the healthy building realm.

00:26:18 Alina Michelewicz

I think that’s really important. Just like from my own experience.

00:26:23 Alina Michelewicz

In my house, where it’s like 100° upstairs, it’s like unlivable in the summer, and even if you have the air conditioner around, it’s like 80°, so it’s like it’s killer. Literally!

00:26:35 Kristin Glossner

Yeah, literally. And that’s why healthy buildings are important.

00:26:40 Alina Michelewicz

Yeah, for sure.

00:26:42 Alina Michelewicz

So you were talking about the indoor air quality and I think this one has come up a lot in general news, like not just green building like, when the gas stove transition to electric was getting talked about in the news because people were like, no, I love my gas stove for cooking, but I think there’s a lot there that people don’t realize how.

00:27:02 Alina Michelewicz

Much it can cause asthma or like other issues, if you’re literally burning fuels inside of your house.

00:27:09 Kristin Glossner

Yeah, indoor air quality is a big one. That’s where the healthy materials come in, for example, because that’s going to improve the indoor air quality as well as increasing ventilation rates. There are a lot of health impacts to negative indoor air quality that can be detrimental.

00:27:25 Alina Michelewicz

Yeah, I think another thing I’ll talk about very much because we’re in Massachusetts, or

00:27:29 Alina Michelewicz

In the in the Boston area.

00:27:31 Alina Michelewicz

But in other areas of New England, people still have wood fires and they still have wood stoves. When I go to my family’s house and their wood stove is on, like my asthma is so much worse.

00:27:41 Kristin Glossner

Yeah, I go to my family’s house and they love their. They love their fireplace in the winter time, and I’m always just. I’m kind of, I’m kind of on their case about it.

00:27:52 Alina Michelewicz

Yeah.

00:27:53 Kristin Glossner

A lot. I do not like to breathe in the smoke that comes from that either, definitely impacts the air quality.

00:28:00 Alina Michelewicz

Yeah.

00:28:02 Michelle Moran

We talk a lot about our multifamily housing, which obviously wouldn’t have wood stoves, There’s so many single family homes that still have that kind of stuff, or fireplaces.

00:28:08 Alina Michelewicz

Yeah.

00:28:09 Kristin Glossner

Mhm. Yeah, we’re seeing a lot of the.

00:28:13 Kristin Glossner

Multifamily buildings that we’re working on, they’re not including fireplaces and wood stoves, which is which is good.

00:28:21 Michelle Moran

I’m just going to read some stats here. This is actually 10 years old now, but we worked at Old Colony which is a famous huge development over here in South Boston, and phase two. We did a case study with the Harvard School of Public Health and they basically interviewed residents and did measurements and they found from the Old Colony was an existing.

00:28:41 Michelle Moran

Tower block that was partially demolished and refurbished so the units were the people moved out and then they moved back in.

00:28:48 Michelle Moran

So they interviewed about their experience before and after, so they had a 57% reduction in particulate matter, 65% reduction in NO2

00:28:58 Michelle Moran

93% reduction in nicotine levels, which also had to do with smoking ban in indoor buildings and in public buildings, 47% drop in sick building syndrome symptoms, and specifically for asthma related issues in children, they reported 31% decrease in asthma attacks.

00:29:14 Michelle Moran

24% fewer asthma related hospital visits, and 21% fewer missed school days.

00:29: 20 Alina Michelewicz

Wow.

00:29:21 Michelle Moran

So this is just from, you know, they they ripped out the guts of the building and put.

In all.

00:29:25 Michelle Moran

New stuff. Can you imagine like what you had? Like you move in and wake up in one day and oh! you feel better.

00:29:30 Alina Michelewicz

That’s crazy.

00:29:32 Michelle Moran

I don’t know if it was that fast.

00:29:32 Kristin

Hahaha yeah.

00:29:34 Michelle Moran

That’s crazy. So like I’m just putting some stats to these concepts Kristin’s talking about it really has a real impact. I mean, 47% reduction in sick building syndrome symptoms…

00:29:44 Michelle Moran

Say that 10 times fast!

00:29:47 Alina Michelewicz

Yeah.

00:29:48 Alina Michelewicz

That’s really crazy. 21% reduction in missed school days. Huh. Another thing I want to point out is when you were talking about formaldehyde and lead.

00:29:58 Alina Michelewicz

People know about asbestos and lead. I think some of the other danger is specifically related to women’s health, reproductive health and infant health are talked about less.

00:30:10 Alina Michelewicz

The endocrine symptoms that you mentioned, and formaldehyde and stuff is really important to highlight how there’s also disparity, I think in the gendered aspect.

00:30:19 Kristin Glossner

Yeah. Yeah, I know that there have been studies that have shown that women are more likely to have greater sick building syndrome symptoms than men are. That was part of my research for my thesis as well. So I learned quite a little bit of that.

00:30:34 Alina Michelewicz

Yeah. Well, yeah, it’s really it’s really hard, especially because infants are home most all the time. So they’re

00:30:41 Michelle Moran

Right, they can’t drive.

00:30:42 Alina Michelewicz

Haha they can’t drive. Michelle.

00:30:43 Kristin Glossner

Yeah.

00:30:45 Kristin Glossner

With children, they are particularly vulnerable, and they’re developing so harmful materials and bad indoor air quality can disrupt their development.

00:30:57 Alina Michelewicz

Mhm. What about water quality?

00:30:59 Kristin Glossner

Yeah, water quality is also one of those things that definitely impacts our health as well. There’s lots of chemicals that are added to the tap water in our cities, and all of those have a negative impact on our health.

00:31:14 Kristin Glossner

Lead can really impact the cognition of children growing up. So like in the Flint, Michigan case, there was lead high levels of lead in the.

00:31:23 Kristin Glossner

Water supply from corroded pipes and it can stay in your body for long periods of time and it impacts you for a long time. So children that are developing it really impacts their cognition and, and their development.

00:31:36 Alina Michelewicz

Mhm. What elements in the healthy building certifications would take lead or water into account?

00:31:42 Kristin Glossner

For example, with the WELL building standard, they focus on water quality.

00:31:43 Alina Michelewicz

Oh, ok.

00:31:44 Kristin Glossner

Yeah, that’s one of the principles. That’s some of their criteria that they have to focus on the water quality as well.

00:31:54 Alina Michelewicz

Yeah

00:31:55 Kristin Glossner

Which is very different from the green building certifications because we don’t see a lot of water quality being focused, with the green building certifications.

00:32:03 Kristin Glossner

It’s about reducing water, whereas with the healthy building certifications, it’s more about the actual quality itself.

00:32:10 Alina Michelewicz

Yeah. OK. Can we talk a little more about mold?

00:32:14 Kristin Glossner

Yeah.

00:32:15 Alina Michelewicz

How does it develop in the house, and how do you avoid it in multifamily buildings?

00:32:21 Kristin Glossner

So with mold, it can pretty much develop from issues in the building envelope, like water ingress, condensation and material decay, as well as excessive moisture in the building. This can lead to asthma, for example, or rhinitis, and general sick building syndrome, as well as issues with your memory and cognition.

00:32:41 Kristin Glossner

It can pretty much grow on most building materials and furnishings, but it’s very important.

00:32:45 Kristin Glossner

To make sure that the humidity ratios in the building are not too high and that we’re not having excessive moisture in the air, for example, or water getting in and not being able to take care of that.

00:32:56 Alina Michelewicz

What is a healthy humidity level for an indoor space?

00:33:00 Kristin Glossner

So typically they recommend between 40% and 60% humidity.

00:33:05 Alina Michelewicz

Mmm. Nice. Hahaha.

00:33:08 Kristin Glossner

Is your home above that?

00:33:10 Alina Michelewicz

In the winter, it’s can be below 20 and in the summer it can be above 80.

00:33:14 Kristin Glossner

Yeah, you definitely need a dehumidifier. Hahaha.

00:33:18 Michelle Moran

So mold’s particularly dangerous, right? Because like you said, it can hide it really easily like it was underneath your baseboard, which you would never have seen unless you took it apart.

00:33:27 Kristin Glossner

Yeah. So it was the smell, so I could smell something. And I had that sensitivity to odors because I was having all these other symptoms on top of it. I had the dizziness, I had the brain fog. I just could not focus for my life. And every time I stood up, I was just so dizzy and I was thinking, am I dehydrated? I was thinking of pretty much everything. Like, is this a.

00:33:47 Kristin Glossner

Greater health problem? All these things, and I just, I noticed that there was a stench in the basement and everyone tells you ohh basement smell.

00:33:55 Kristin Glossner

And I got in a mold remediator because like there’s no way like I can’t deal with the smell. And then they actually ripped apart pretty much my entire basement bathroom. I guess the previous ownership, it was ,just they weren’t ventilating it well when they were showering down there and like using.

00:34:15 Kristin Glossner

The laundry. So yeah, it was hiding behind everything. And honestly for like.

00:34:20 Kristin Glossner

A year or two it was.

00:34:22 Kristin Glossner

The, there was no drywall down there was pretty much just like an open room.

00:34:27 Alina Michelewicz

Better that than mold though.

00:34:28 Kristin Glossner

Yeah. Yeah, definitely. Yeah, they they had to take out a lot and there was also mold in the attic as well that had to be taken care of due to roof leaks.

00:34:38 Alina Michelewicz

Oh, roof leaks, not condensation.

00:34:41 Kristin Glossner

No. Yeah, not condensation. When I bought the house, I found out right away that there were six leaks that have been going on for quite a long time. That wasn’t fixed by previous ownership. Thankfully, it’s all fixed now, but there was a lot of mold and issues up in the attic as well.

00:34:57

Yeah, that’s tough.

00:34:59 Alina Michelewicz

I think it’s hard when you get a new house too. It’s like people can cover things up too.

00:35:03 Kristin Glossner

Yeah, that was one of the problems with my house. So, another aspect in healthy buildings that we need to consider is pests. And when I first bought my house, that was another problem that I didn’t realize until I had been living there for quite some time. I had mice and rats.

00:35:18 Kristin Glossner

That would steal, steal my dog’s food and bring them into the walls. That’s another thing that’s really important in a home that’s to focus on, you know, making sure we don’t have pests. That could be a huge problem to our health. Rats and mice, they can carry diseases and.

00:35:34 Kristin Glossner

That can be transmitted to people.

00:35:37 Michelle Moran

So many things to think about, and then you also mentioned earlier, resilience to climate events and weather events, which we didn’t really touch on, but is another huge portion of healthy buildings correct?

00:35:47 Kristin Glossner

Yeah, because with the changing climate and the changing weather patterns and events that are going to be coming in the future, we need to make sure that we have homes that are resilient and can keep us healthy and safe. And we’re not getting in water, for example, um excess water that’s going to.

00:36:07 Kristin Glossner

Increase the amount of mold we have in our house or our thermal comfort. For example, making sure that, you know our systems are working correctly so we’re not uncomfortable or having health impacts from the humidity or the indoor air temperature not being comfortable.

00:36:25 Alina Michelewicz

Yeah, I think we’ll get into that more too with Wen and Paul on the next episode.

00:36:31 Alina Michelewicz

Could you tell us about radon? I don’t think that’s a huge issue in Mass, but it is in New Hampshire, right?

00:36:36 Kristin Glossner

Yeah. So right on occurs from the ground and it can pretty much leak into your homes. And this is actually one of the top few leading causes of lung disease and lung cancer.

00:36:52 Alina Michelewicz

Whoa.

00:36:53 Kristin Glossner

Yeah, I always recommend that everybody should get their basement checked. I know my house. Back when I was living in Kansas, I had really high radon levels in the basement. So I got a whole fan system put in, but I see it happening a lot.

00:37:09 Alina Michelewicz

Really?

00:37:10 Kristin Glossner

Yeah, they’re in a certain zone where radon is higher than other areas and they’re putting in systems to just make sure the air quality is.

00:37:19 Alina Michelewicz

So it can happen in multifamily buildings. I guess that makes sense, but I just never thought about it.

00:37:22 Kristin Glossner

Yes. Yep, that’s correct.

00:37:25 Michelle Moran

Kristin. So in a home, are there specific rooms that relate to health in different ways than other rooms? For example, you talked about the basement.

00:37:32 Kristin Glossner

Yeah, there are a bunch of sources of indoor air pollution, depending on the residential room type, so the attic might have that asbestos or unhealthy insulation as well as dust and dust mites. Bedroom might have your typical allergens carpets that is tracking in air pollutants.

00:37:51 Kristin Glossner

The garage you might have to consider carbon monoxide, gas, solvents.

00:37:56 Kristin Glossner

Paint and chemicals, in a bathroom you might need to consider excess humidity, your personal hygiene products, which if you’re spraying different sprays can have harmful impacts to your health as well, and also mold in a bathroom your home office. You might need to focus on printers and photocopiers.

00:38:17 Alina Michelewicz

Really?

00:38:18 Kristin Glossner

Yup. Because they can give off ozone, and furniture as well. So furniture can have high VOC content or the formaldehyde and different vapors that are harmful for our health. With kitchens, we have our cooking pollutants, we have.

00:38:30 Kristin Glossner

Different lingering odors and different bacterias, in a living room we might need to consider fireplaces, for example dust and other sorts of allergens. Carpet. Again, that might be catching these pollutants, and you know you can touch them, you can inhale them, and then in the basement, yeah, we have the.

00:38:50 Kristin Glossner

High humidity levels, bad odors, mold, carbon monoxide.

00:38:54 Kristin Glossner

Also possibly fireplaces and smoke, radon, also dust and combustion systems, also paint and chemicals, but that can be applicable pretty much to the whole house as well as household cleaners as well.

00:39:08 Alina Michelewicz

I’m feeling very overwhelmed.

00:39:10 Kristin Glossner

Yeah it’s a lot.

00:39:11 Alina Michelewicz

I feel like. I think my house is slowly killing me.

00:39:14 Kristin Glossner

Traditional structures and buildings are probably slowly killing us, and if we want the, if we want to be healthier in the long term, like I really, truly believe that our indoor.

00:39:27 Kristin Glossner

Environments are a huge factor and a huge key to improving all of our healths.

00:39:35 Michelle Moran

All right. Well, Kristin, thank you so much for joining us today and talking about this with us today.

00:39:41 Michelle Moran

Do you have any closing thoughts before we sign off?

00:39:43 Kristin Glossner

Yeah. So as building professionals, I believe that we can change the way we build and sustain the built environment, and we can do this by promoting health. I think it’s important that we don’t just consider the environmental principles when designing and constructing our buildings, but we also start prioritizing health in the built environment because this can improve outcomes that are related to both the social aspects.

00:40:04 Kristin Glossner

And economic aspects of sustainability.

00:40:06 Michelle Moran

Excellent.

00:40:07 Alina Michelewicz

This was great. Thank you.

00:40:08 Kristin Glossner

Yeah, of course. I’m happy to be here.

00:40:10 Michelle Moran

Thanks so much.

00:40:12 Michelle Moran

Thank you again to Kristin for that deep dive into health and safety as it relates to buildings and sustainable development, we learned a lot there. That was crazy. We encourage all of our listeners to check out our previous episodes, and like, rate, and follow BuildingWell on your preferred player. Stay up to date for future developments and episodes.

00:40:34 Michelle Moran

BuildingWell is available on Spotify, Apple, Amazon, YouTube, and most other podcast services. Information on this episode, including show notes, references and the transcript, can be found on our website at newecology.org/buildingwell/podcast.

00:40:50 Michelle Moran

Please follow New Ecology on LinkedIn, Instagram and Twitter/X at new_ecology. Thank you to our listeners for tuning in today and thank you to Kristin and Alina for joining me. See you on the next episode!

00:40:59 Alina Michelewicz

See ya!

00:41:01 Kristin Glossner

Bye!

00:41:02 Molly Craft

This episode was made possible by the Mass Save Community Education grant.

00:41:07 Michelle Moran

The BuildingWell season one podcast committee at New Ecology is led and organized by Alina Michelewicz and Michelle Moran. Mass Save Minutes by Molly Craft. Production, editing and music by Michelle Moran. Video editing by Michael Abdelmessih. Episode notes by Kristin Glossner. Transcript by Michelle Moran. Episode description by Michelle Margolies.

00:41:28

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