Peace and Environment News* June 1995
|
Peace and Environment News * June 1995 |
by Estelle Taylor
Since the First World War, 50,000 new artificial chemical compounds have been introduced into the construction industry alone, Sharp estimates, and many give off toxic substances.
A woman stood up before a recent talk on environmental hypersensitivities and asked if anyone knew of a place where she could live. Or if there was a place she could share. Anywhere in Canada. Right now, the woman is living at a campground and must find a place before it gets cold.
The woman has environmental hypersensitivities, and her body cannot handle living in a conventional house.
People with environmental hypersensitivity—also called multiple chemical sensitivity—are allergic to many solvents, chemicals and smells. They can't tolerate the dust and mould in houses and the volatile organic compounds (such as formaldehydes) emitted by plastics, particleboard, and other materials.
A person often becomes hypersensitive after an acute exposure to a certain chemical. Thereafter, any exposure to the irritant, no matter how small, triggers a hypersensitive reaction.
A person's home becomes a danger zone.
A housing project in Barrhaven is helping to change that, with seven safe houses for people with hypersensitivities. The units are unique architectural accomplishments and, as their long waiting list and the woman living in the campground prove, much-needed.
The seven units are part of a forty-one unit housing project built by Barrhaven Non-profit Housing Corporation in spring 1993. Barrhaven United Church, which owned the land, came up with the housing project idea. The church helped create the corporation and then leased the land to it.
The seven units stand separate from the others, attached side by side and back to back. The building looks like a cube with a steep roof. Wrapped in white clapboard siding, it may look like any other housing unit, but it isn't. Every detail of this building, from light fixtures to insulation, has been carefully planned to accommodate people with environmental hypersensitivities.
The insulation around the building is covered with aluminum foil, not plastic as is conventionally done, explains Phillip Sharp, the project architect, because the plastic would bother hypersensitive people. Even the insulation, a mineral fibre that looks almost like wool batting, had to be modified. Sharp had it made so that the usual additives, oils and latex were not put in. These additives make the insulation safer for installers to handle, though, since they prevent dust, so when putting in the insulation, the installers were decked out in protective gear covering their whole body and had respirators over their heads. They "looked like they came from outer space" says Sharp.
Since the First World War, 50,000 new artificial chemical compounds have been introduced into the construction industry alone, Sharp estimates, and many give off toxic substances. There were many areas where he had to change how things would normally be done.
There were "lots of little experiments going on" to find safe supplies, remembers Sharp.
The concrete used for the outside walls was made especially for this project. There were no additives, and a water-based inert solution was used to penetrate into the concrete so the concrete wouldn't create dust.
The inside walls are made of hardwood. Softwoods have a lot of resin in them and have an aroma that irritates people with environmental hypersensitivities. Sharp used bass wood for the walls, and got the company to clean its machines before cutting the wood into planks.
Sharp didn't put soft plastics in these apartments. People with environmental hypersensitivities cannot tolerate soft flexible plastics because they give off gases. Hard rigid plastics are better, because when the hard plastics are baked to shape them in a certain form, 90 percent of the gases are "baked out" of them.
Often though, a hard plastic, such as a kitchen countertop form, needs glue to hold it in place. Glues, of course, can't be tolerated. Sharp used thick "butcher block" maple for the kitchen countertops, cleaned with virgin olive oil.
The light fixtures in the houses are fixtures designed for the outside. Outside fixtures are by law made of ceramic. Inside plastic fixtures give off gases when they heat up.
The outside steel posts and beams that are on the porch were spray painted in a car body shop and baked so that they don't give off any chemicals.
Sharp says it was surprisingly easy to get manufacturers to modify their products. Once they found out why the odd requests were being made, "they got very interested."
Besides finding alternatives to regular building supplies, Sharp also had to rethink the design of this house. "Every little ledge is a potential dust collector" he says, and he had to minimize the risk of dust.
For example, backs of appliances are big dust collectors. Sharp designed the house so that all the appliances are fitted against a wall that opens to a "mechanical room." A person goes into the room to easily and quickly clean the exposed coils.
The airtight homes have a constant air exchanger and a heat recovery ventilator that recovers the heat from air before it is circulated to the outdoors. A mechanical ventilation system filters and screens most of the outdoor pollution coming inside. If something happens outside to give off a lot of pollution—for example, if a neighbour is burning garbage—the intake valve on the system can be closed and the fan shut off until the pollution goes away.
But Sharp says no one has burned garbage near the units. The neighbours have been very understanding and thoughtful of the people in the seven units, he says. Before the houses went up, the United Church told everyone in the area about them and how chemicals affect the people living in them. The neighbours in the housing unit are constantly reminded they are living near people with hypersensitivities.
The city and regional governments agreed not to use chemicals on any surrounding lands, roads, or the nearby baseball field. The city cuts the grass near the houses with a hand mower.
Sharp is pleased with the houses, happy they "can provide a completely neutral safe haven" for sick people to recover. He realizes Barrhaven is "not the ideal site" for such a project because once people step out of the houses they're bombarded with chemicals. But he thinks it's important to provide an alternative for people who can't afford to move to the country and build their own home.
The Barrhaven project has greatly affected Sharp. Before the project he knew nothing about environmental hypersensitivities. He now feels "morally obliged" to design buildings in the most sensitive way he can. "I'm really concerned that we do it for everybody," he says, because he realizes that any one of us could become hypersensitive at some time.
"Your body can only take so much" before "you flip."
He sees people with environmental hypersensitivities as canaries in a coal mine and says we must start paying attention to what has happened to them.
For more information, contact Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation (728-6884) or Phillip Sharp Architect Limited (730-4590).
Estelle Taylor has a degree in Journalism and is a regular contributor to the Peace and Environment News.
Converted July 7, 2000 - Lg
To follow up on this article, contact the author or the organizations/individuals mentioned; do not contact the Peace and Environment Resource Centre - we cannot provide follow up or contact information. This article is an archival copy of the printed one in the Peace and Environment News (PEN). Viewpoints expressed should not be taken to represent the opinions of the Peace and Environment Resource Centre, the PEN, or our supporters.
