The choices we make when specifying building materials can have significant effects on the planet and human health. The world is facing cataclysmic issues such as climate destabilization, pollution, biodiversity loss, deforestation, and greenhouse gases. Construction produces vast volumes of waste and consumes colossal amounts of energy. Design professionals can make a difference in minimizing the damage to the environment and human health by selecting better building materials.
Health Product Declarations (HPDs) and Environmental Product Declarations (EPDs) are important tools in LEED v4.1 to create sustainable projects. LEED v4 was launched in 2013 and most design professionals who have worked on LEED projects over the past ten years have used HPDs or EPDs or are at least familiar with them. There are so many things to learn about the design and construction of a building, that nobody is an expert on everything. EPDs and HPDs have been buzzwords in the industry for years yet there is still confusion by some about these strange sounding acronyms.
EPDs and HPDs are both transparency documents used for sustainable design projects, especially for LEED. One declaration isn’t better than the other. They have different aims. They are different on a micro level but are similar on a macro level in that they offer design professionals additional resources to specify better materials to protect human health, protect the environment, and make better buildings.
EPDs are a standardized way of communicating the environmental effects associated with a product or system’s raw material extraction, energy use, chemical makeup, waste generation, and emissions to air, soil, and water. An LCA is the major building block used to create an EPD. The LCA is the comprehensive report and the EPD is the distilled short version.
Before an LCA and EPD can be created, a Product Category Rule (PCR) must be used to start the process. A PCR defines how to standardize this information for a specific product type, such as flooring. The PCR defines scope, system boundary, measurement procedures, impact measures and other technical requirements.
While EPDs focus on environmental impacts and life cycle, HPDs focus on human health and potential health hazards. The Health Product Declaration (HPD) is a voluntary industry standard for reporting and disclosure of detailed product content and associated health information for building products. By reporting on all product contents and associated health information, HPDs offer design professionals the ability to make more informed decisions about the products they specify. And manufacturers who offer products that are optimized in terms of chemical ingredients can benefit by being preferentially specified by design professionals looking for healthier products.
A completed HPD is a reporting document that lists the various materials and substances in a product and identifies the known health hazards associated with each material or substance.
The HPD also doesn’t provide an assessment, label, or certification of the level of product performance, meaning that it does not specifically identify if one product is better or worse than another.
To conclude on EPDs and HPDs, they are mainly differ as following:
• EPDs focus on a product’s life cycle and environmental impacts.
• HPDs focus on human health and potential hazards of a product’s ingredients