Healthy Materials Lab at Parsons
This week we’re in New York talking to Jonsara Ruth, Co-Founder & Design Director of the Healthy Materials Lab and Associate Professor at Parsons School of Design.
Jonsara received a Masters of Architecture from Cranbrook Academy of Art and a BFA in Industrial Design from Rhode Island School of Design, she also has her own healthy materials design collective called Salty Labs.
The Healthy Materials Lab is all about placing health at the center of real estate architecture and design. They aim to raise awareness about toxics in building products and create educational online resources for designers and architects that further that cause.
I recently completed their 4-part Online Certification Program to become a Healthy Materials Advocate and cannot recommend the course enough, whether you work in this industry or are simply curious to understand more about buildings and the materials that go into them, both good and bad.
It’s far easier not to look under the hood, right? To trust that developers, architects and contractors have our best interests at heart… I hate to burst your bubble but that just ain’t so, nowhere is this more acute than in our homes, offices and Jonsara explains, the worst offender of all, the affordable housing sector.
Jonsara speaks with the precision of a Professor and the conviction of someone with a very clear mission in life, so listen up people, this is a good one.
If you enjoy this episode, hit like or subscribe for next week’s release.
See our 9-point guide to healthy buildings here.
CONVERSATION HIGHLIGHTS
Our central objective really is to remove harmful chemicals from the built environment that are prohibiting people from living healthy lives.
Just a few thousand years back People were building shelter exclusively out of what was around them - natural materials like wood from trees, clay, stone or water.
It turns out the building products that we primarily build with now contain chemicals that are often very toxic to human bodies. They can now be found in almost every building product in a conventionally built building.
I know this all sounds like a horror movie but of course a lot of this is invisible and that's why it's really important for us to know more, especially as designers and architects - to know enough to not include these materials that contain chemicals in the buildings that we're designing.
Climate change, environmental health and people's health are completely interrelated. There's no way to separate them.
I see more and more people being inspired to make change and taking on the challenge of what that means.
FULL TRANSCRIPT FOLLOWS COURTESY OF OTTER.AI (excuse any typos)
MM
Jonsara, many thanks so much for joining us on the show today. Could we start with a quick description of the Healthy Materials Lab at Parsons and its main objectives are?
JR
Yeah, sure. It's great to be here, Matt. Thanks for inviting us. I'm happy to represent our fantastic team of collaborators at the Healthy Materials Lab at Parsons.
You know, our central objective really is to remove harmful chemicals from the built environment that are prohibiting people from living healthy lives. That's the big, big picture.
We believe that if we can, as designers, architects and building professionals, put people in the center of our minds, when we make every design decision, then that changes the way we think about design, and it also puts people's health and environmental health at the forefront.
It changes the way we think about building products and the environment and changes the way we think about the whole process of designing our specific focuses on affordable housing, and people living in affordable housing.
The way that we do that is by providing education to designers, architects and building professionals and even faculty who are teaching the next generation of designers and architects so that they can understand how to design healthier buildings and homes as well.
We do that with courses, short courses, and programs that allow professionals to use these programs as their continuing education credits, so that they can build this right into their practice.
We have two robust online programs. One is specifically about affordable housing. And the other one is more generally, for anyone who is interested in the built environment and making it healthy. We also provide resources and tools and examples for designers and architects to make it simpler to build healthier.
A lot of the work that we're doing is to translate information from examples and from disciplines other than design into actionable knowledge within the building industry. So there's a lot of work being done about the Toxics included in building products. And a lot of that work is happening in science, or in public health, or in material research, or in environmental justice, advocacy.
We are constantly calling upon all of these different perspectives, and interpreting that into useful knowledge for designers and architects, and then putting it into, hopefully, really easily accessible formats through our website, live events and recorded education programs. Our goal is to really make make radical change in the building industry so that everyone can live healthier lives.
MM
It really can be like opening Pandora's Box, once one starts to get into this topic of healthy buildings and healthy materials, there's so much to get one’s head around and so much to research, having trusted sources of expertise becomes fundamental to accessing the right information and for us as designers and real estate professionals to get to the best possible answer as quickly as possible.
If we take a step back, just for perhaps those who are less aware of the risks and dangers of toxic chemicals in our built environment in the buildings around us, what are the main sources of those chemicals? How are they released into the air? What are the risks at stake in these unhealthy buildings and interiors?
JR
Yeah, the sources can be anything in the built environment. We live in a physical world that is made up of materials. I like to think about it historically.
Just a few thousand years back People were building shelter exclusively out of what was around them - natural materials like wood from trees, clay, stone or water. They were mixing these things together to make shelter.
Healthy materials vs unhealthy building products
In the Industrial Revolution there's this huge surge in manmade synthetic products that are primarily based in the fossil fuel industry. There was all this discovery going on about how to take to make synthetic products act a little bit more like natural products, and they were doing it quickly, without much regulation.
Sources of chemicals in indoor environments
Well it turns out the building products that we primarily build with now contain chemicals that are often very toxic to human bodies. They can now be found in almost every building product in a conventionally built building.
That can range from flooring materials, to wall materials, insulation materials, even to the paint on our walls, much of which is synthetic, acrylic, which is plastic. It’s almost like we're living in a plastic bag.
Almost every single material that's used in the built environment is a ‘product’ with a list of ingredients, like you might find in packaged food products.
Negative health impacts of unhealthy building materials
There's been research in the last 25 years to look at the ingredients that are in building products and identify their link to human disease. And it turns out that a lot of these chemicals are linked to human diseases as common as asthma, or diabetes, obesity, or even nerve disorders, autism, attention disorder in children and so on. Then there are the carcinogens and hormone disruptors as well.
So there's a long list of effects that these chemicals in building products can have on human bodies, and the especially vulnerable or children, because their organs are still growing, then their whole bodily system is affected, or older people who are have immune compromised systems are overly affected or pregnant women are, you know, gestating fetuses who could be affected.
Harmful chemicals released into the atmosphere
They can be released through VOCs / volatile organic compounds, or SVOCs, which are gaseous, so they can be emitted, they're invisible gases that release into the indoor environment and then we breathe them in. That's probably one of the most common ways that we can be affected through through inhalation.
Building materials also decompose over time. And as they decompose, they have like microscopic particles that move into the air and and cling on to dust and that dust can also be inhaled. Or it actually can even be ingested.
If we're eating, our mouths are open. We're sitting on a sofa, there's a little bit of dust on the sofa that gets onto our pizza, we put the pizza in our mouth, or some some kinds of chemicals actually can be absorbed through the skin.
So Bisphenol A, for example, has been found on cash register receipts, there's Bisphenol A there so the people working in a grocery store are more vulnerable than all of us, because they touch them every minute, but if we also touch that cash register receipt, we can absorb that Bisphenol A through our skin, which then acts as an endocrine receptor, a hormone disruptor in our body.
I know it all sounds like a horror movie but of course a lot of this is invisible and that's why it's really important for us to know more, especially as designers and architects - to know enough to not include these materials that contain chemicals in the buildings that we're designing.
MM
So this is where we start to build up the argument for how one can can improve the health credentials of our buildings, to do better than has been done in the past. But first we must, I think, define one element you mentioned around people and environmental health or rather how our health as humans, and the health of the environment and the planet around us are interconnected. Can one draw a line between the two? Is there in fact, no clear distinction between them?
Life Cycle Assessments of materials and building products
JR
You know, Matt, I think it's all related, it's impossible to separate the two. The way we think about this is through the full lifecycle of a material.
Take luxury vinyl tile (“LVT”) if we look at the origins of that material, or rather product made up of many different materials, unlike real wood for instance.
If you have LVT, it's made up of many different materials. And there's some great research, which traced all those different materials, so we're looking at vinyl and where all those ingredients come from, and tracing them back to their origins, we find that just in the mining of chloride, and in the manufacturing of vinyl it is extremely harmful to the environment, and to anyone living near those facilities.
So if we think about where plastics or petroleum, fossil fuels are refined, there are communities who unfortunately do not have much choice about where they live, and their housing is located right next to these refineries. And so those people are exposed to the plastics refinery on a daily basis, 24 hours a day.
It’s just one example where there's a link between the environmental pollution affecting the land, our soil and water systems, it's emitting huge amounts of carbon dioxide into the air, which we know is a major emitter of greenhouse gases, which then go on to cause climate change.
Then there's the people who are living right there, next to that factory, who are affected by that same air pollution. And then if that LVT makes it into their homes, then they're affected by the chemicals that make LVT pliable, soft, so now they're in their homes.
It’s really just following our imagination, asking “how is something made?” “Where is it made?” “What does it affect?” You can see how climate change, environmental health and people's health are completely interrelated. There's no way to separate them.
There's this great report that just came out in October called The New Coal - Plastics & Climate Change, by Beyond Plastics.
The summary of their findings show that plastics production might be even more negative impact on the climate than burning of coal. And the plastics production is a lot about building materials. It's a lot about making the places that we live, which then go on to negatively affect our human health, like we talked about before they can be, they can disrupt our hormone systems, as well as disrupt the climate, the atmosphere.
Biophilia
MM
We're using this People or Planet distinction as if they were somehow two separate concepts. But in fact nature is a bridge between them - it’s a false dichotomy. I often think of biophilia as being the bridge between those two. Once you accept that, once you see the bigger picture of us being at one with the natural world, then there is no distinction to make.
Healthy interior consultants in the design process
If we then look at how the practical realities of integrating some of these concerns into the design process, when we're talking about real estate developers, architects and designers, who are then giving health, both human and environmental health, a seat at the table, so that it becomes part of the design process of building or refurbishing, what does that look like in practical terms? Is it just about having a healthy interiors consultant on the team?
JR
What we're doing at Parsons is to develop a curriculum and courses to help educate the next generation of architects and designers to understand their choices better. So that's beginning, but in terms of professionals who are building buildings, now, there's more education necessary. We're involved in that effort to educate professionals to know better, but we also know that the process of building a building and the day to day demands upon an architect or designer are so extreme that often consultants are needed, yes.
the road to healthier buildings
You know, it takes time and resources to examine our choices more carefully. If we think about using healthier building products, and making healthier buildings, we actually do have to examine our past experience in our past choices, and we need to examine it pretty closely. That is where I think consultants come in.
I think we're also seeing that larger architecture and design firms are beginning to hire in, in house experts in material health, a lot of our students, our graduate students, and our researchers who have worked with us at the Lab, then move on to work in architecture and design firms, and they become the resident expert.
Healthy building standards
There are credentials to achieve, you know, you there are BREEAM in Europe, there's LEED, there's all these different certifying bodies which help people navigate the system. But some of those criteria would maybe not be aggressive enough. And so it's really important for folks to have genuine knowledge, not just to follow guidelines.
MM
I think that's one of the things I took from your four part online certification course - was that you didn't shy away from just showing how complex and thorny, this whole process is, really exposing that and being completely transparent about it, rather than trying to write the textbook and assume that’s the end of the debate.
So with that course, who's your main audience?
JR
Yeah. I mean it's really directed, primarily directed at designers and architects, and, but also at anyone in the building industry. Because we know that contractors, for instance, and developers, and owners of buildings, even maintenance workers, have a huge impact on the way that building is built, and the way that building is maintained.
So anyone involved in making choices for the building products or materials used in buildings, are the potential students of this course. That’s the big objective is, is just like you said, for people to understand that it's not straightforward, that it takes real thought to do it right, we have to weigh our choices, we have to make compromises always and make priorities about buildings. And so what we're trying to do is educate a way of thinking we call it material health thinking.
Architects and design professionals have been taking our course, and we're seeing, at least locally in the US, that we were watching practices actually shift to healthier ways of building, which is phenomenal.
Our next frontier is really to educate, to provide education that's appealing to building contractors. Because at the contractor level, that's where a lot of substitutions happen, you know, the architect and designer can write in a specification for a healthier building product, but then there might not be the money. And then the owner might say, Well, we, you know, we can't spend that much. And then the contractor will say, well, we'll just substitute it for this. And all of a sudden, you've lost your healthier building. Or at least you've lost strides on that. So that's our next frontier is to really to recruit more, more contractors and more maintenance folks in buildings to take these courses and even developers to take the courses.
MM
What is it about affordable housing that makes it such an acute problem in terms of the health or poor health credentials of these buildings?
JR
One of maybe the most obvious reasons is because affordable housing is generally built with cheap materials. And those cheap materials are generally the most unhealthy. Most of the cheap materials that are available today. are synthetics based in plastics, so based on the refinement of fossil fuels, which then are made into materials that are then made into the building products.
If you can find something that's $1 a square foot, well, let's use it for the poor people in affordable housing, and that's the thinking process and we're trying to change that. And to say, actually, we need to use healthier materials for people who don't have a choice about where they live.
Their homes might be located hated near factories or near toxic waste dumps or near highways where there's just a lot of exterior pollution. And then they go inside and their flooring is polluting their house too, they're being polluted in their external life and in their interior spaces.
And then often also people who are living in affordable housing are working in factories, and they're working on construction sites, and they're working in places where they're exposed all day long to harmful chemicals.
And then some of those chemicals are on their, their clothing, and then they bring that clothing home, and then the children in that household are exposed, doubly or triply.
So that that's the reason we've focused because we focus on affordable housing, because people who are living in affordable housing, our have all kinds of more risks and hazards of being exposed to harmful chemicals than than others.
So it's really important that at least we build homes, for low income people that are healthier, you know, let's start there. And, you know, try to give everyone a chance to live a thriving healthy life.
MM
It was a real eye opener for me, I'll be very honest, I think probably been guilty of falling into what is, in retrospect, a fairly white middle class privilege perspective on what I do, which is, trying to help in my own way to create healthier interiors. And it's far easier to have those conversations on premium new build or high end refurbishment projects in central London, with big pension funds behind us and plenty of cash.
There's still topics of discussion and debate around budgets but the numbers are on a completely different scale. And that section of your course really brought it home to me in a lightbulb moment, I just thought, oh, wow, there's this whole other side to this debate, which is, okay, how do we make all this happen when there aren't these big budgets available? How do you how do you crack that?
JR
That's a really great question. And that's where we dig into the details. I mean, that's where we really have to dig into the strategy for the financing of a building. We might redirect funds to materials, you know, adding a little bit of material and adding a little bit of budget to material cost. And what we're finding is that actually, material costs is less of an issue than labor costs anyway.
If this knowledge is brought to the table, then there are other ways to think about those budgets. So it really becomes more of an economic issue with folks in the other white collar folks in the office is like rethinking how they're, they're aligning their budget.
So for instance, if there's a developer who's building housing in five different cities, and there's an architect or designer who's specifying the materials in those cities, if they specify a particular flooring material, for instance, in each of those five buildings over 1000 units, rather than maybe 100 units, then the price differential goes way down. And then you can work it out with the manufacturer, who will often lower the cost. And so then it becomes much more cost competitive.
MM
When you look, say 10 years down the line from where you're at today. And considering where we've got to, what has been done and what has yet to be done. Are you optimistic for the future of healthy buildings and materials?
JR
We're suffering through such hard times right now, our workplace closed again today, like we did in 2020. And there's so much hardship, really, and, you know, we think about the climate crisis and the challenges that we need to overcome in order to slow the temperature rise. And so there's so much to say that we shouldn't be optimistic. But I can't afford not to be optimistic. I'm an optimist. Otherwise, I think I couldn't do this work. I do believe that we can make the shift.
More people who've taken the course or who understand the issues are inspired to make change, they're not discouraged, I see the opposite, I see more and more people being inspired to make change and taking on the challenge of what that means.
I think there's also been more and more economic arguments for the same - political and economic arguments often drive change. And so I think there's more and more legislation also, but we really as designers, and architects can make these changes that can make have mass, mass impact in the in the most positive way.
MM
Thank you for your time, we will link to the course in the show notes. How do you typically recommend people to engage website? Obviously your main? Yeah, weigh in? Do you do LinkedIn, Instagram, what are your channels,
JR
So www.healthymaterialslab.org is our website and on the Learning Hub, you can find the courses and register.
The registration is through the New School, which is where Parsons School of Design and where Healthy Materials Lab is houses. We're also on LinkedIn, and on Instagram and on Facebook. Our handle is at healthy materials lab. S
I hope more folks, join us there, come to our website, you'll find in addition to our courses, you'll find examples of healthier materials that you can specify. You can find tools and resources that will help you get there faster, and ultimately, a four course program which will give you all this knowledge that Matt is mentioning, after having taken the course.
So actually registration is open now through the end of January for the course and then it will close and not open again until the summer. So if you're listening, I encourage you to to Register now for the for the course at healthymaterialslab.org.