We are bombarded with media stories and “public health” activist groups that claim we are living in a toxic soup, unavoidably exposed to unsafe chemicals found in products and materials that we regularly use and rely upon. The campaign to eradicate these so-called toxic chemicals from our everyday lives has reached a fever pitch. Rules, regulations and legislation are being proposed that would eliminate these substances merely because they might pose a hazard or risk, without any requirement to scientifically verify what, or how much, is actually present.
The USGBC has been wrestling with this since it first introduced the LEED rating system. The USGBC commissioned a study that examined how PVC fared environmentally against a handful of alternative building materials and discovered that, “No single material shows up as the best across all the human health and environmental impact categories, nor as the worst.”