A person on average spends 90 percent of his or her time indoors, yet most people don’t know that the air inside their homes and offices may be more harmful to their health than outdoor smog, mainly because of the organic and inorganic toxins contained in building materials, a group of green building advocates said yesterday.
At a public hearing in Taipei, Democratic Progressive Party Legislator Tien Chiu-chin (田秋堇) invited dozens of representatives in the construction and interior decoration industries to discuss the relationship between health and the use of green construction materials (GCM). The meeting drew representatives from national construction material associations, GCM development associations, interior design groups, construction businesses, public health academics and government agencies.
Many experts said GCM was not only good for the environment, but also pertinent to maintaining one’s health. However, the government is not aggressive enough in promoting GCM in homes and offices, they said.
Former Environmental Protection Administration minister Winston Dang (陳重信) said at the hearing that while some construction materials may be legal for sale, they can result in dire health problems.
“For example, chromium copper arsenic [CCA] is sometimes used to preserve wood, but CCA-treated wood has been found to be carcinogenic in the US and its manufacturers voluntarily withdrew the products in 2003,” he said.
While CCA-treated wood has since been banned in other countries, such as New Zealand, it can still be sold in Taiwan, Dang said.
But CCA-treated wood is not the only construction material that can harm health, meeting participants said.
“Toxins contained in indoor air including organic [such as formaldehyde, which is carcinogenic] and inorganic materials [such as lead, which can cause mental retardation when ingested], ones that vaporize and ones that don’t, as well as toxins that have long-term or short-term effects,” National Health Research Institutes associate investigator Julie Wang (王淑麗) said at the division of environmental health and occupational medicine.
Wang said that while current regulations are more stringent in terms of building materials, many old buildings still contain these toxins, such as leaded paint.
“My recommendation is to investigate old buildings in phases, and renovate them with GCM wherever necessary,” she said.
Many meeting participants said the government needed to start comprehensive promotion of GCM, because current law only mandates that new construction projects use at least 5 percent GCM.
“My association contains more than 100 construction companies. However, we feel that while we have together invested more than NT$50 million [US$1.5 million] in developing GCM, the government has not helped us promote it, at least not to the extent it has campaigned against smoking … We feel helpless,” Taiwan Green Building Material Development Association chairman Yang Che-kai (楊捷凱) said.
“Currently construction projects only need to use 5 percent GCM, and the government said it was working toward raising the bar to 30 percent. If so, the government should publish a clear timeline to achieve that goal,” he said.
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