Ills caused by global climate change range from increased frequency of asthma and heat stroke to more intense storms and species extinction. While environmentalists go far past calling the phenomenon a “nuisance,” they are applauding eight states and one city for doing just that. The attorneys general of California, Connecticut, Iowa, New... Read more

, warns an article in the July 2004 issue of the

Journal of Light Construction (JLC). According to Kevin Hansen, who recently investigated abandoned tannery sites in the Wilmington, Delaware region for Tetra Tech, Inc., the leather-making industry used to soak animal hides in a slurry of lime and arsenic... Read more

At the June 2004 American Institute of Architects (AIA) national convention in Chicago, the Portland Cement Association (PCA) rolled out a sustainability initiative, “Concrete Thinking for a Sustainable World.” Part of PCA’s Cement Manufacturing Sustainability Program, the initiative will help the industry develop sustainability guidelines,... Read more

Seattle’s

Environmental Home Center (EHC), profiled in “Getting the ‘Right Stuff’: A Guide to Green Building Materials Retailers” (EBN

Vol. 10, No. 4), lost its main warehouse, showroom, and offices to a fire on August 11, 2004. Two warehouses remain standing, however, and the company has laid out an aggressive recovery plan in... Read more

Power to the People: How the Coming Energy Revolution Will Transform an Industry, Change Our Lives, and Maybe Even Save the Planet by Vijay Vaitheeswaran; Farrar,... Read more

2004 Energy Efficiency Integration Awards: the

Cesar E. Chavez Education Center in Oakland, the

Challengers Tennis Club for Boys and Girls in Los Angeles, and

Lake View Terrace Branch Library in Los Angeles (the latter two of which are profiled in... Read more

ozone levels in the eastern half of the U.S. exceed air quality standards set by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), predicts a report published by the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC). The study,

Heat Advisory: How Global Warming Causes More... Read more

U.S. Plastic Lumber (USPL) filed voluntary petitions for bankruptcy in late July 2004. The company is seeking debtor-in-possession financing, available only to companies in Chapter 11, to support its current operations and has hired Triax Capital Advisors to direct its reorganization. “Our filing provides U.S. Plastic Lumber with the... Read more

The day-long seminar “Educating the Educators: A Crash Course on Eco Design™” is intended to quickly

bring design educators up-to-speed on green design. David Bergman, architect and teacher at Parsons School of Design, and Erika Doering, interior designer and teacher at Parsons and Pratt Institute, developed the program with the... Read more

Nicola Valley Institute of Technology in Merritt, British Columbia has won a

Governor General’s Medal for Architecture, jointly administered by the Royal Architectural Institute of Canada and the Canada Council for the Arts. Shared by the Nicola Valley Institute of Technology and the University College of the Cariboo, this 48,600... Read more

Formaldehyde is a human carcinogen, according to a new report from the World Health Organization (WHO) International Agency for Research on Cancer. The agency upgraded its evaluation of formaldehyde from a probable carcinogen to a known one after the release of new evidence that formaldehyde causes nasopharyngeal cancer in humans. Based on... Read more

The Aamjiwnaang First Nation near Sarnia, Ontario is experiencing an increasingly

skewed ratio of female to male births, according to a July 31 article in the

Globe and Mail. Until recently, the community tracked normally, but in 1994, the ratio suddenly shifted and has been heavily skewed toward females ever since. In 2003, the... Read more

There’s a lot of pavement in the United States—nearly 38,000 square miles (9.9 Million ha) or an area about the size of Indiana, according to calculations EBN has done (Vol. 5, No. 1). The vast majority of this is impermeable surface that contributes to stormwater runoff. In certain applications, that pavement can be made porous so that the... Read more

There’s a new option for potable-water, hydronic-heating, and other pressurized piping applications: polypropylene from the German company Aquatherm, GmbH. Aquatherm has been producing high-quality Fusiotherm® polypropylene (PP) piping for 30 years with tremendous success—never having paid a claim for damage due to failure of the piping,... Read more

University of Manitoba interior design students

Tamara Nyysola and

Corina Penner have won the first-ever

GreenInteriors Student Design Competition. Dow BioProducts, Inc. and

Interior Design magazine sponsored the first annual competition, which drew 55 entries from 14 design schools across North America. The... Read more

EBN

Vol. 9, No. 3), touches on all aspects of green design... Read more

The European Union’s risk assessment of the deca form of polybrominated diphenyl ether (PBDE) was released on May 28, 2004, concluding that there is no reason to restrict use of the flame retardant. Nearly ten years in the making, this risk assessment came as a great relief to the chemical industry, which has been faced with rising concerns... Read more

Steelcase, Inc. has announced its Environmental Partnership Program, enabling companies to resell, refurbish, donate, or recycle used Steelcase office products through a network of recyclers, resellers, and nonprofit organizations. “Today, many companies are not sure what to do with their furniture when it reaches the end of its useful life to... Read more