Today we’re releasing our latest white paper, “Sick Building Syndrome: When Good Air Goes Bad.”
Headaches, fatigue, respiratory problems, and dizziness may sound like side effects from a strong medication, but they can also be contracted just from sitting at your desk! While the consequences of outdoor air pollution have been topics of public concern for decades, the threats of poor indoor air quality (IAQ) are lesser known.
Outdoor elements such as ozone depletion, greenhouse gas emissions, and smog are widely discussed and harmful to the planet—but what about the air we breathe inside? Volatile organic compounds (VOCs) and sick building syndrome (SBS) aren’t as well known as the previously mentioned threats, yet anyone who works or lives indoors is susceptible to the health effects of poor indoor air quality.
This paper presents the employee health and productivity risks of poor IAQ while examining the potential consequences to a business’s bottom line, if the indoor environment is not properly maintained. Additionally, this paper will introduce the Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) standards for monitoring indoor spaces and provide solutions to combat poor IAQ.
To read more, download this free white paper!
EVENTS: "Sustainability in Fire Protection" Conference - Day 3
Dispatch from SSC President Jennifer Woofter
I'm happy to report that my team won "brew pub bingo" last night. Never let it be said that I'm not motivated by a little competition. Of course, that means I'm a little tired this morning, the final day of our conference.
Fortunately, we kicked off the conference with a fabulous talk on sustainability standards and certifications by Rudolph Overbeek from Intertek. That, and a big cup of coffee, have energized me for the rest of the day.
Well, maybe not "energized" -- because, you see, I've been trying to cram in full days of conferences and associated activities AND keep up with my normal work schedule. What that means in practice is that I've been getting up at 5am each morning so that I can get a couple of meetings out of the way before the conference begins each day. I've also been working late into the night, following up with emails, reviewing documents, prepping for stakeholder interviews next week, helping to develop a vendor code of conduct, amending a client's employee handbook to incorporate sustainability, and a dozen other things that I've blocked out of my head to preserve my sanity.
I love my work -- I really do. And I think I'm probably in the same boat as a lot of other people in the sustainability profession, seeing the vast amount of work that needs to be done and working overtime to get it done.
But there comes a time when personal sustainability comes into play and we need to take a big step back and realize that we can't go 100% all the time. Thankfully, this is a lesson that I've learned (albeit the hard way) over the last six years of running SSC, and I am careful to schedule a little down time during these frantic business trips.
Beginning tomorrow, I'll be in Portland for eight days -- the first six of which are blissfully unencumbered by anything more strenuous than a few telephone meetings. I plan on doing a lot of walking around, sitting in coffee shops, and taking in the Pacific Northwest vibe (which I have missed dreadfully since my undergraduate degree at the University of Oregon). Ahh, bliss.
I realize now that this dispatch has taken a turn dramatically different than a simple report on the conference proceedings. But perhaps the ongoing discussions about lifecycle approach have trickled down in a natural way to the personal level. Just as we must look at each stage of a product's life cycle to manage it responsibly, it makes sense to look at each aspect of our own lives and make sure that our "processes" are managed for long-term sustainability.
P.S. -- As a result of this conference, I have noticed that I check out the fire protection system (sprinklers? extinguishers?) in every building I enter. So please don't be freaked out when we meet next and I'm craning my neck to check out your office ceiling.
EVENTS: "Sustainability in Fire Protection" Conference - Day 2
Dispatch from SSC President Jennifer Woofter
This morning I gave my presentation on "Understanding and Advertising in the Green Market." Whew -- it is always a pleasure to get my talk over with so that I can relax and focus on the rest of the speakers.
One of my other tasks for the Coalition for Responsible Fire Protection (host of this event, and on whose Board I sit) is to gather feedback from participants that we can use on the Coalition blog to extend the value of the conference proceedings. So at every break, I've been running around with my little flip camera and asking people to answer one of three questions:
1. Why are you a member of the Coalition?
2. What about the Coalition's work are you most excited about?
3. What is the most important take-away for you from what you've seen so far?
You can check out the Coalition's blog over the next few weeks to see the actual video clips as we post them with links back to particular presentations, but let me give you a sneak peek at what I'm hearing:
Theme #1: Lifecycle Thinking Is Critical
The Coalition has made it a priority to look at the issue of sustainability in fire protection from a lifecycle perspective. Rather than looking at a narrow set of issues (like end-of-life reclamation/disposal or emissions during accidental discharge), the Coalition is committed to promoting the role of lifecycle analysis to ensure that the industry can focus its attention in a strategic way on the most important issues. Participants are unanimous in their support for this approach.
Theme #2: Sustainability Is More Than Being "Green"
The fire protection industry will pursue sustainability when it makes good business sense, but economic realities make it difficult to pursue "green" strategies that are not grounded in specific business reasons--whether tax incentives, green building code requirements, compliance with regulation, or an opportunity to manufacture systems more efficiently. Participants are keen to understand how to better make the business case within their organizations and to their customers.
Theme #3: Business Is Leading, Government Is Lagging
We have seen presentations on climate legislation and regulation, FTC rules on green marketing, EPA's role in regulating fire fighting chemicals, and others. In those talks and in the subsequent discussions, a recurring theme is that government is generally lagging in promoting sustainability and that business is instead (at least in the United States) leading the way in promoting sustainable practices in their own operations and throughout their supply chains.
Tomorrow is the final day of the conference, and I'm already dreading the moment when I have to check out of my fantastic hotel room and leave Park City. Fortunately, my trip is only just beginning, and starting on Friday I'll be on my way to Portland, Oregon to attend the ISSP Conference for sustainability professionals. I'm curious to see how many of these themes are repeated in this next event!