Green Buildings and Health

Green building design is becoming broadly adopted, with one green building standard reporting over 3.5 billion square feet certified to date. By definition, green buildings focus on minimizing impacts to the environment through reductions in energy usage, water usage, and minimizing environmental di...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Current environmental health reports 2015-09, Vol.2 (3), p.250-258
Main Authors: Allen, Joseph G., MacNaughton, Piers, Laurent, Jose Guillermo Cedeno, Flanigan, Skye S., Eitland, Erika Sita, Spengler, John D.
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Acoustics
Air Pollution, Indoor
Asthma
Biomedical and Life Sciences
Biomedicine
Building design
Certification
Climate change
Conservation of Energy Resources - methods
Construction standards
Design
Energy
Energy consumption
Energy usage
Environment
Environmental Health
Environmental quality
Facility Design and Construction
Global Environmental Health and Sustainability (JM Samet
Global Environmental Health and Sustainability (JM Samet, Section Editor)
Green buildings
Green development
Health Status
Humans
Indoor air quality
Indoor environmental quality
Indoor environments
Lighting
Medicine/Public Health
Outdoor air quality
Pharmacology/Toxicology
Pollutants
Preventive maintenance
Quality standards
Section Editor
Self report
Sick Building Syndrome - prevention & control
Topical Collection on Global Environmental Health and Sustainability
Water conservation
Water consumption
Water use
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Summary:Green building design is becoming broadly adopted, with one green building standard reporting over 3.5 billion square feet certified to date. By definition, green buildings focus on minimizing impacts to the environment through reductions in energy usage, water usage, and minimizing environmental disturbances from the building site. Also by definition, but perhaps less widely recognized, green buildings aim to improve human health through design of healthy indoor environments. The benefits related to reduced energy and water consumption are well-documented, but the potential human health benefits of green buildings are only recently being investigated. The objective of our review was to examine the state of evidence on green building design as it specifically relates to indoor environmental quality and human health. Overall, the initial scientific evidence indicates better indoor environmental quality in green buildings versus non-green buildings, with direct benefits to human health for occupants of those buildings. A limitation of much of the research to date is the reliance on indirect, lagging and subjective measures of health. To address this, we propose a framework for identifying direct, objective and leading “Health Performance Indicators” for use in future studies of buildings and health.
ISSN:2196-5412
2196-5412
DOI:10.1007/s40572-015-0063-y