April Forum: Indoor Air Quality

Most of us spend nearly the entire day in buildings: working, sleeping, eating, and of course breathing. However, when thinking about air quality and pollution we tend to first consider the outdoors and keep the indoors as our safe refuge from smog, allergens, particulates and other contaminants. Since we spend so much time inside, most of our exposure to environmental pollutants actually happens inside our homes, workplaces, and everywhere else we stop in between.

Poor indoor air quality resulting from the presence of chemicals, mold, pests, particulates, combustion gases and lack of ventilation may at times only produce bothersome yet less severe disturbances like headaches, fatigue, irritation and allergies. But in more vulnerable populations such as children with asthma the long term effect may be recurring visits to the emergency room due to continued exposure to asthma triggers.

In a city with so much older deteriorating building stock, and sometimes questionably constructed new buildings, what can we do as individuals to become aware of these contaminants, demand better, and reduce their ill effects?

Join us at the April Forum where a medical doctor, a building consultant, and a public advocate share their wisdom about how better buildings, materials, and daily habits can help us improve the air we breathe.

Date: Tuesday, April 19, 2016

Time: 6:30-8:00pm
Place: Steven Winter Associates
307 7th Ave, New York, NY 10001,
Suite #1701
New York, NY 10001

Our accomplished speakers will be:

Dr. Elizabeth Garland

Associate Professor - Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai

Elizabeth Garland, MD, MS is an Associate Professor in the Departments of Preventive Medicine (DPM) and Pediatrics at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai. She is the Director of the Division of General Preventive Medicine and Community Health in the DPM and is the Director of the General Preventive Medicine Residency for 20 years. She is core faculty and the Health Promotion Disease Prevention Track Leader in the Mount Sinai Graduate Program in Public Health.

Dr. Garland studies the health impacts of Green building on health. One study in the South Bronx demonstrated that moving to Green affordable housing significantly improves asthma symptoms and decreases health care utilization. Another study on active design looked at change in residents’ physical characteristics, exercise level and stair usage. For this project she won the Steven Hooker Award for Outstanding Research in the field of physical activity at 2015 American Public Health Association conference. Website:http://icahn.mssm.edu/

Lauren Hildebrand
Senior Sustainability Consultant at Steven Winter Associates
Lauren Hildebrand’s work focuses on sustainable and high performance residential and commercial building design, construction, renovation, and operation. Most recently she moderated the Healthy Buildings Roundtable at the Parsons School.

At Steven Winter Associates she manages all air quality testing for the firm, collaborates with Enterprise Green Communities, Healthy Buildings Network, Centek Labs, and various other clients/vendors to ensure the proper specification of healthy building materials, pest control management, non smoking guidelines, and active design activities.

Her expertise further includes: sustainable design integration; energy performance testing; and implementing project certification for both commercial and residential programs, such as LEED®, ENERGY STAR®, NYSERDA, NJ Clean Energy, and Enterprise Green Communities. Awards presented to her clients include the 2013 USGBC NJ Urban Green Project Award.

Bill Walsh,

Founder and Executive Director of the Healthy Building Network

Bill Walsh has provided the long-term vision for the Healthy Building Network since February 2000. Previously he held leadership positions with Greenpeace USA and staff attorney positions with the U.S. Public Interest Research Group and the Institute for Public Representation of Georgetown University Law Center. He holds a JD from Northeastern University School of Law and LLM in Public Interest Advocacy from Georgetown University.