Hormone receptor activities of complex mixtures of known and suspect chemicals
View Research
A Program at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health
There are over 80,000 chemicals widely used in commerce – the vast majority of which haven’t been tested for human safety. Even common chemicals that we do know are harmful to our health are still ubiquitously added to products and found in the bodies of virtually every American. For over a decade, we have conducted research on our indoor exposures to chemicals from building materials and products.
There are solutions to this problem. In 2017 we launched a new collaboration with Harvard’s Office for Sustainability and created the Harvard Healthier Building Materials Academy. The goal was to ground our product purchase decisions in the latest science, including leading research done right on our own campus.
We held workshops and information sessions with stakeholders across the University to bring the science on healthier materials to the forefront, empowering all to lead the implementation effort across the campus. And that they did – focusing on ingredient transparency and eliminating classes of chemicals from key product categories, there are now over 40 projects across the campus using this approach, including the new Science and Engineering Complex.
Our study on the impact of these healthier materials decisions found lower levels of toxic chemical classes in these projects, showing that when we act, we make a difference.