Toxins are often released in the course of extracting resources, processing raw materials, creating new materials, living with and discarding products. These substances of concern, health impacts, exposure routes and people exposed are as varied and numerous as the number of products in the world. History is rich with examples of unintended toxic exposure of people, from building and consumer products and their manufacture.
Connecting the dots between human health and toxicity related to products is a daunting endeavor. Yet many manufacturing industries are hard at work to reduce the real and perceived unhealthy aspects of their products and processes. As product specifiers, we play an important role in supporting those efforts and asking for transparency.
As more and more products come with transparency, not only will manufacturers have incentives to investigate and implement less toxic options, we will be armed with tools to help identify the least-toxic options.
In this section you can explore:
