Indoor Environments & Green Buildings

Policy Resource Center

 

ELI’s Indoor Environments & Green Buildings Program advances policies and programs that make buildings healthier and more sustainable places to live, learn, and work. We provide a variety of materials – from in-depth research reports to policy briefs on emerging issues and compilations of state laws and regulations – that build on advances in public health science and building science. Read more about the Program.

Learn about Recent Developments in IAQ Policy.

 

Addressing the Hidden Health Risks of Cooking
Author
Amy Reed - Environmental Law Institute
Environmental Law Institute
Current Issue
March-April 2022
Issue
2
Amy Reed

The pandemic has focused increased attention on indoor air quality and ventilation, particularly in commercial and institutional settings. However, many people remain unaware of the health risks posed by an activity that occurs every day in their homes: cooking.

Any type of cooking, from boiling water to frying food, will produce some amount of indoor air pollution. One of the most serious pollutants is particulate matter, or fine particles, which is generated by cooking food and heating oil on all types of stoves. Cooking with gas produces harmful combustion products like nitrogen dioxide and carbon monoxide, and both gas stoves and electric stove burners generate ultrafine particles.

These cooking-related pollutants are linked to health impacts, including respiratory problems and cardiovascular disease, and some people—including children, older adults, people with underlying conditions, and people who have been socially and economically disadvantaged—are at increased risk of harm from exposure.

Fortunately, addressing this widespread problem does not require people to stop cooking indoors, or even to decrease the frequency. It does, however, require attention to factors like stove type, cooking methods, and perhaps most importantly, ventilation. To some extent, all these factors are determined by individual choices and behaviors, but they also are driven by governments that adopt policies around how homes are designed, constructed, and maintained—especially when it comes to ventilation.

Kitchen ventilation systems like range hoods are key to preventing cooking-related pollutants from mixing with the rest of the indoor air and accumulating to unhealthy levels in homes. This is especially the case in smaller dwellings such as apartments, where there is less indoor air volume to dilute the pollutant concentrations. Yet, despite the importance of kitchen ventilation to protecting occupant health, new houses and apartments are still being built without adequate kitchen exhaust systems installed.

Highlighting this important issue, ELI published a report titled Reducing Exposure to Cooking Pollutants: Policies and Practices to Improve Air Quality in Homes. The resource describes building codes and other policies to ensure kitchen ventilation, and notes additional opportunities to reduce exposure to cooking pollutants, such as through housing codes and funding programs.

A critical first step is for jurisdictions to adopt building codes or other policies requiring installation of range hoods or other kitchen ventilation systems in all new and renovated residential buildings. Many U.S. states, tribes, and municipalities adopt residential building codes that are based on the model International Residential Code. Since the IRC does not affirmatively require installation of local exhaust systems in all kitchens, governments can follow the lead of jurisdictions including Washington, Oregon, and the District of Columbia, all of which have amended the IRC to include a mandatory kitchen ventilation provision. Governments can go further by establishing stronger performance standards for kitchen ventilation systems to ensure that all homes have the capacity to remove cooking pollutants effectively, regardless of dwelling size or stove type.

The California Energy Commission has taken recent action to do just that. Last August, the agency adopted changes to California’s statewide building code that significantly strengthened the state’s requirements for kitchen ventilation. Notably, the state’s new performance standards for kitchen ventilation systems go beyond the consensus standard of practice by including differential requirements for gas and electric stoves based on a home’s square footage.

Of course, reducing cooking pollutant exposure in existing homes is no less important than in new construction, and there are opportunities to improve kitchen ventilation in the existing housing stock as well. Housing codes that apply to rental dwellings might be used to address kitchen ventilation, and funding programs such as Weatherization Assistance Programs and Community Development Block Grant programs could be tapped to assist lower-income families in making ventilation improvements to their homes.

Beyond ventilation policies, some local governments are heeding the calls of climate advocates and public health experts to focus on building electrification (also referred to as building decarbonization): the phasing out of natural gas appliances to improve indoor and outdoor air quality and address climate change. In December 2021, New York City became the largest municipality to effectively ban gas appliances through a local prohibition on carbon emissions that will apply to most buildings by 2027.

With growing public awareness of the importance of adequate ventilation, this is an opportune time for policymakers to adopt measures that will reduce exposure to indoor pollutants. 

Addressing the Hidden Health Risks of Cooking 

ELI Report
Author
Akielly Hu - Environmental Law Institute
Environmental Law Institute
Current Issue
January-February 2021
Issue
1

Virtual Reality Fifty years after kicking off the green movement Denis Hayes receives ELI reward with public health again topic one

The Environmental Law Institute’s annual award ceremony was held virtually on October 15, live-streamed to our members and distinguished guests for the first time due to the coronavirus pandemic.

The event convenes law, management, and policy professionals to honor outstanding achievements in environmental protection. Proceeds support ELI’s research and education programs and publications.

This year’s gathering introduced a few changes due to the virtual format — a networking reception was hosted on the online event platform Remo, and the award ceremony was streamed live on YouTube.

Denis Hayes, principal organizer and founder of Earth Day, received the 2020 ELI Environmental Achievement Award. Hayes serves as president and CEO of the Bullitt Foundation and is the founder of the Earth Day Network. He is widely recognized for expanding Earth Day to 190 nations, making it the most widely observed secular holiday in the world. An environmental thought leader, writer, and speaker, Hayes is also well known for designing and building the Bullitt Center in Seattle, regarded as “the greenest office building in the world” and the first major building to meet the rigorous Living Building Challenge certification standards.

Congratulatory remarks via video were offered to Hayes by Gina McCarthy, president of the Natural Resources Defense Council and former administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency, Christine Todd Whitman, former EPA administrator and former governor of New Jersey, and Diane Keaton, the actor and filmmaker.

Gerald Torres, professor of environmental justice at Yale School of Environment and professor of law at Yale Law School, offered an official introduction for Hayes. “When environmental history is written, Earth Day will figure as a crucial inflection point. . . . It gave us what we regard as the basic infrastructure of regulations that have been so effective. Most people in the United States believe that the current quality of the environment is what it has always been. Of course, they would not have the luxury of that illusion but for people like Denis and the lives that Earth Day changed. Denis’s work is to continue to awaken people of the need for continued vigilance. He’s a champion of the belief that responsible public action is the most straightforward path to the future we want to embrace.”

Hayes’s acceptance of the award was delivered in the form of a celebratory interview with Stacey Halliday, independent consultant for Beveridge & Diamond. The two discussed various aspects of Hayes’s extensive career, including his reasons for expanding Earth Day to the rest of the world, priorities for the Bullitt Foundation, the green building design of the Bullitt Center, and environmental justice.

Despite the challenges of hosting the award ceremony virtually, President Scott Fulton noted some encouraging developments in his introductory speech. As the Institute’s main fundraising event, the ceremony garnered close to the amount of funds historically raised from the live dinner event.

This past year, ELI also successfully pivoted to remote programming, thanks to its experience with running virtual webinars, and achieved record attendance at its seminars and events over this difficult year.

While honoring the events of the past half century, Fulton also acknowledged the extraordinary environmental and public health impacts experienced today, with the pandemic, wildfires, and the racial injustice crisis, declaring that environmental protection remains as important as it was 50 years ago.

Institute, partners, research impacts of the digital economy

The Project on the Energy and Environmental Implications of the Digital Economy, a research program led by ELI in partnership with the Center for Law, Energy & the Environment at UC Berkeley and the Yale School of the Environment, published a series of research papers in September exploring the environmental impacts of the digital economy. Developed by seven research teams, the papers examine topics ranging from the use of blockchain technology to manage sustainable supply chains, quantifying the greenhouse gas emissions of ride-hailing platforms, and assessing the climate impacts of a peer-to-peer food-sharing app.

ELI has been involved in the digital and environmental nexus for the past twenty years. Visiting Scholar David Rejeski noted in a 1999 article on e-commerce published in the Forum:

“The Internet is today’s frontier. . . . The traditional tools of environmental policy may not work well in a world like this, if they work at all.” Many of the questions surrounding the digital space remain just as urgent as decades before. As the digital economy continues to expand, so too will our need to understand the environmental impacts of our digital lives and, importantly, develop better data to guide decisions by policymakers, businesses, and consumers.

The project began four years ago with two workshops on the environmental impacts of sharing platforms and artificial intelligence. These meetings convened researchers from various institutions interested in this field, creating an initial overview of the state of the research that eventually led to funding of the project. The initiative includes a project website (digitalenergyenvironment.org), a bibliography of curated research in the digital and environmental space, research papers, and an inventory of environmental applications of blockchain technology. The program has received close to $1 million of support from the Alfred P. Sloan and McGovern foundations.

Moving forward, the project will continue to identify research opportunities and establish an institutional home for its activities, with the goal of creating and nurturing a new field of research with a dedicated focus on understanding the energy and environmental implications of the digital economy.

Report on Arctic marine resources highlights food sovereignty

In September, ELI and its partners released Food Sovereignty and Self-Governance: Inuit Role in Managing Arctic Marine Resources, a report analyzing current Inuit management and co-management of marine food resources and the role of Indigenous self-governance in supporting food security.

The report, a culmination of a four-year-long project, examines how existing laws and policies support Inuit self-governance, and uplifts Inuit voices and expertise in the interpretation of legal frameworks. The project features four case studies from the United States and the Inuvialuit Settlement Region of Canada focused on walrus, char, beluga, and salmon to highlight the connections between resource management and food sovereignty.

Aligned with its central purpose to bring together and amplify Inuit voices, the project was co-developed and co-led by Inuit individuals and Inuit-led organizations. In total, the report involved over 90 Inuit authors and an advisory committee of Indigenous knowledge holders. Partners include the Inuvialuit Game Council and the Fisheries Joint Management Committee (in the settlement region) and the Eskimo Walrus Commission, the Association of Village Council Presidents, the Kuskokwim River Inter-Tribal Fish Commission in Alaska, and the Inuit Circumpolar Council Alaska, as well as ELI, with ICC Canada serving as advisor.

Efforts were made to give every voice equal weight in order to create ownership and prioritize the knowledge of people experiencing marine resource issues first-hand. David Roche, ELI staff attorney, managed the project, and Cynthia Harris, director of tribal programs and deputy director of state, local, and tribal environmental programs at ELI, served as a legal researcher for the project.

The report represents a continuation of ELI’s projects in the Arctic, which have covered topics such as model Alaska Native consultation procedures, science communication, and government-to-government consultation related to marine subsistence resources in Alaska. In future Arctic policy research, ELI plans to continue applying the report’s principles of co-producing knowledge and building long-term partnerships for more effective project outcomes.

ELI in Action ABA awards Institute for “ELI at 50” program

The Institute’s “ELI at 50” program received the 2020 American Bar Association Section of Environment, Energy, and Resources Distinguished Achievement in Environmental Law and Policy Award. The annual award recognizes individuals or organizations that have made significant contributions to improving environmental law and policy and advancing environmental protection and sustainable development in the United States.

In a virtual award ceremony, the ABA noted that ELI offered innovative programming in each month of 2019 and produced significant publications in the past year, facilitating “critical discourse of where environmental law has been, and where we must go next.” President Scott Fulton noted in his acceptance speech that 2019 was a record-breaking year for ELI, both in the number of programs offered as well as the number of practitioners reached through the Institute’s programs.

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On September 25, 2020, the ELI China Program held a webinar on best practices in environmental enforcement under a grant from the U.S. Embassy in Beijing. Close to 200 government and legal professionals in China joined the webinar, representing over 20 different provinces. Attendees included officials from the Ministry of Ecology and Environment and provincial bureaus of environmental protection, judges, prosecutors, and members of nonprofits, academia, law firms, and businesses. President Scott Fulton, Distinguished Judicial Scholar Merideth Wright, and Visiting Scholar LeRoy Paddock presented on various aspects of compliance and enforcement in the United States. Topics of discussion included monitoring, permitting, citizen suits, penalties, and judicial supervision of remedies. Simultaneous interpretation from English to Chinese was provided via Zoom, enabling a bilingual presentation for attendees.

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Since 1998, with support from EPA, ELI has convened public health officials from across the United States who share the mission of improving indoor environmental quality. In October, ELI convened the 15th Workshop for Indoor Air Quality Officials, a three-day forum attended by representatives from over 30 states, several tribal and local governments, and officials from EPA. The workshop addressed both long-standing indoor air quality topics and current issues implicated by the pandemic, such as ventilation, cleaning and disinfection, and management of Legionella and other plumbing pathogens.

Although the workshop was convened as an online event for the first time, its purpose and approach remained the same: to foster sharing of information among programs to identify new strategies, resources, and opportunities for collaboration to reduce indoor air risks.

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In September, the International Network for Environmental Compliance and Enforcement, of which ELI serves as secretariat, held the first session of a six-part webinar series on current and potential uses of citizen science to improve environmental monitoring, compliance, and enforcement. The webinar, Citizen Science: Concepts and Applications for Enforcement, featured presentations on the role of citizen science in scientific research and monitoring, regulatory decisions and enforcement, and environmental justice, among other applications. Other webinar topics in the INECE citizen science series include water pollution, air pollution, Indigenous and community monitoring, and emerging government strategies.

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Pesticides have widespread impacts on agriculture, ecosystems, and public health, especially for communities such as farmworkers and children. In October, ELI hosted a webinar titled Pesticides, Farmworkers, Industry, and Environmental Justice, exploring recent changes in federal regulation of pesticides and policy approaches to addressing safety and environmental justice issues.

Speakers included James Aidala, consultant at Bergeson and Campbell; Patti Goldman, managing attorney at Earthjustice; Gretchen Paluch, pesticide bureau chief at the Iowa Department of Agriculture and Land Stewardship; and Caleb Pearson, assistant general counsel at CropLife America.

Earth Day founder Denis Hayes wins ELI Award.

New Report Offers Policy Strategies for Reducing Indoor Exposure to Outdoor Pollutants
February 2020

(Washington, D.C.): Particulate matter (PM) remains one of the most significant air pollutants in terms of public health impact. PM exposure affects the cardiovascular, respiratory, and nervous systems, causing illness and premature death. And recent research has shown that health effects are associated with PM levels below current federal air quality standards. While the health risks from particle pollution have been understood for some time, it is less widely recognized that most of our exposure occurs indoors.

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