Sustainability and Toxicity of Building Materials

Sustainability and Toxicity of Building Materials: Manufacture, Use and Disposal Stages provides a review of toxicity impacts from building materials, including the consideration of the toxicity in the extraction and manufacture of the materials and eventual dismantling and disposal. This book also offers the potential to stimulate future developments in this area, both in terms of knowledge-building and methods for future research. With the increasing emphasis on sustainable construction, it has become important to better understand the impacts of common materials. Civil and structural engineers, postgraduates, researchers as well as architects will find this book to be useful in selecting sustainable building materials.

While many building and furnishing materials are safe to use, in recent decades, some have had to be redesigned due to recognition that they contained problem chemicals like formaldehyde. Unfortunately, there is still limited understanding of the toxic impacts of many synthetic chemicals which means that the risks in this area are not well recognized. With increasing interest in using limited resources more sustainably, definitions of what is sustainable should be expanded to move from the focus on energy and carbon impacts to also include more explicit consideration of toxicity impacts.