Healthy Buildings: How Indoor Spaces Can Make You Sick-or Keep You Well

by Joseph G. Allen, John D. Macomber

Overview

A revised and updated edition of the landmark work the New York Times hailed as “a call to action for every developer, building owner, shareholder, chief executive, manager, teacher, worker and parent to start demanding healthy buildings with cleaner indoor air.”

For too long we’ve designed buildings that haven’t focused on the people inside—their health, their ability to work effectively, and what that means for the bottom line. An authoritative introduction to a movement whose vital importance is now all too clear, Healthy Buildings breaks down the science and makes a compelling business case for creating healthier offices, schools, and homes.

As the COVID-19 crisis brought into sharp focus, indoor spaces can make you sick—or keep you healthy. Fortunately, we now have the know-how and technology to keep people safe indoors. But there is more to securing your office, school, or home than wiping down surfaces. Levels of carbon dioxide, particulates, humidity, pollution, and a toxic soup of volatile organic compounds from everyday products can influence our health in ways people aren’t always aware of.

This landmark book, revised and updated with the latest research since the COVID-19 pandemic, lays out a compelling case for more environmentally friendly and less toxic offices, schools, and homes. It features a concise explanation of disease transmission indoors, and provides tips for making buildings the first line of defense. Joe Allen and John Macomber dispel the myth that we can’t have both energy-efficient buildings and good indoor air quality. We can—and must—have both. At the center of the great convergence of green, smart, and safe buildings, healthy buildings are vital to the push for more sustainable urbanization that will shape our future.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780674278363
Publisher:	Harvard University Press
Publication date:	10/18/2022
Edition description:	2nd ed.
Pages:	336
Sales rank:	427,732
Product dimensions:	6.10(w) x 9.20(h) x 1.30(d)

About the Author

Joseph G. Allen is Director of Harvard’s Healthy Buildings Program and Associate Professor at the Harvard T. H. Chan School of Public Health. A renowned forensic investigator of “sick buildings” and frequent keynote speaker, he advises leading companies around the world on healthy building strategies. A key voice in communicating the science of COVID transmission to the public, he has appeared on CBS, CNN, CNBC, and Bloomberg, and has written many influential pieces for the Washington Post, New York Times, Atlantic, and USA Today. He is Chair of The Lancet COVID-19 Commission Task Force on Safe Work, Safe School, and Safe Travel.

John D. Macomber is Senior Lecturer at Harvard Business School and a world leader on the financing of resilience. He is the author of dozens of HBS case studies on infrastructure projects, focusing on office buildings in the United States, housing in India, water management in Mexico, and private sector–led new cities in Asia.

Table of Contents

Preface to the 2022 Edition vii

Preface: Why This Book? xi

I The Case for Healthy Buildings

1 Who Are We and Why Should You Care? 3

2 The Global Mega-changes Shaping Our World, Our Buildings, and Us 22

3 Why Are We Ignoring the 90 Percent? 38

4 Putting the Building to Work for You 55

5 Creating and Capturing Value 71

II A Healthy Building Strategy

6 The 9 Foundations of a Healthy Building 85

7 Our Global Chemical Experiment 123

8 Buildings as a First Line of Defense against Covid and Other Airborne Infectious Diseases 147

9 Healthy Building Certification Systems 163

10 Moving from KPIs to HPIs 191

11 Beyond the Four Walls 216

12 What's Now and What's Next? 233

Conclusion: Buildings, Business, Health, and Wealth 256

Notes 269

Acknowledgments 293

Index 299

Editorial Reviews

We’ve known for years that our indoor environments, from offices to hospitals, can have a dramatic affect on our health, functioning, and mental wellbeing, and 2020 has proven the point…[Allen and Macomber] share insider tips and show how tracking what they call ‘health performance indicators’ with smart technology can boost a company’s performance and create economic value. A post-COVID handbook.

AIA New York - Laura Raskin

A lucid and passionate outline of why now is the time to acknowledge the huge and unrealized potential for buildings to make a positive contribution to the health and performance of their inhabitants, the economy, society and the planet. In this sense, this is a very different and innovative book compared with other similarly themed ones…This is a powerful and enjoyable book, which will appeal to those with an interest in business and built environment alike…Both a relatable and authoritative read.

Buildings & Cities - Marcella Ucci

[Allen and Macomber] tread new ground, transitioning from the century-old building code movement, which focuses on safety; to the decades-old green building movement, which focuses on energy, waste, and water savings; to the evolving healthy building movement, which focuses on people and their health, cognitive abilities, productivity, and well-being…This book is innovative, timely, and forward-looking.

Journal of Urban Affairs - Katrin B. Anacker

In this new era of ESG responsibility, every CEO must consider our built environment to fully meet stakeholder expectations. Joe Allen and John Macomber’s multidisciplinary, accessible approach unlocks the secret to future human health and productivity gains in the very buildings in which we live and work.

Tom Burton

Indoor air quality directly impacts our lungs, and we have a responsibility to remove indoor air pollutants that are linked to asthma, lung cancer, and other serious diseases. Healthy Buildings lays out the simple steps we can all take to improve our health.

Harold Wimmer

If we’ve learned anything from the coronavirus pandemic, it’s that clean indoor air is essential to healthy living. But it’s not just about getting rid of viral particles. Dr. Allen, director of the Healthy Buildings program at Harvard, has led research showing that poor indoor air quality dulls your brain, dampening creativity and cognitive function…This book is a call to action for every developer, building owner, shareholder, chief executive, manager, teacher, worker and parent to start demanding healthy buildings with cleaner indoor air.

New York Times - Tara Parker-Pope

This exposé of the widespread under-ventilation and pollution inside modern buildings arrived just as shared indoor space became truly deadly. Though there’s now light at the end of the COVID-19 tunnel, these insights and guidelines for improving indoor air quality should play a huge role in post-pandemic reforms.

Fortune

Allen and Macomber want to establish national standards, and they make a series of precise and persuasive recommendations for everything from insulation and window shades to water filters and vacuum cleaners.

New Yorker - Jill Lepore

The manual for keeping people safe indoors.

Boston Globe

Healthy Buildings is both hugely important and a great read. By the end it not only completely persuaded me that improving the health of our buildings is a fabulous economic opportunity and something that could change the lives of millions of people—it gave me a very good sense of where to start. Highly recommended.

Rebecca Henderson

This book should be essential reading for all who commission, design, manage, and use buildings—indeed anyone who is interested in a healthy environment.

Norman Foster

Sustainability and health can no longer exist in separate domains. Healthy Buildings bridges the divide. Allen and Macomber link health science and business science for a new way to think about buildings.

John Mandyck

Healthy Buildings makes a great contribution by urging us to shift to a ‘health-first’ mindset in relation to our built environment. Its unique insights help close the knowledge gap around healthy buildings, reveal their important role in global sustainability, and provide practical guidance on the main factors we should all be on the lookout for in our homes, offices, and schools.

Cristina Gamboa

The engaging conversational style of this comprehensive book makes it an ideal read for any busy building owner or executive who wants to learn about the new science of healthy buildings and to discover how following healthy building strategies may impact their (and society’s) bottom line.

Christoph Reinhart