More on Greenguard

Thank you for the article on the Greenguard™ certification program (in EBN Vol. 12, No. 10). Unfortunately, some of the information presented in the article may be misleading. I would like to comment on a few issues you mentioned.

Greenguard certification is a complex product-evaluation program that enables specifying professionals to easily find low-emitting products that have been tested and certified by an industry-independent organization. The Greenguard standards are based on proven requirements used by the State of Washington and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), and they are in no way arbitrary. These standards have been used successfully in numerous buildings throughout the country since the early nineties, and their proven effectiveness has been published in various case studies (for example, the State of Washington Air Quality Building Study prepared for EPA in 1996). There can be no doubt regarding the stringency of the Greenguard requirements because, so far, fewer than 20% of all products tested for Greenguard certification have been able to meet the requirements without making changes to the product or the manufacturing process. Greenguard does not encourage manufacturers to build custom products so they can bid on multimillion-dollar opportunities requiring low-emission performance but rather aims at fundamentally changing the way manufacturers make all of their products, so superior-performing products will be available to specifiers working on smaller projects, too.

The article compares Greenguard certification to the CA 01350 specification, which is a difficult comparison at best. CA 01350 is a building specification guideline that focuses on each specific building project, where products have to meet emission requirements based on complex calculations. This means that a product may be considered low-emitting for one building project but not for the next. Furthermore, CA 01350 is not a testing protocol; it does not provide a standardized program to address product installations, product handling, and testing methods; and it does not control product integrity and performance.

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