title: Green Buildings and Health.
abstract: Green building design is becoming broadly adopted, with one green building standard reporting over 3.5 billion square feet certified to date. By definition, green buildings focus on minimizing impacts to the environment through reductions in energy usage, water usage, and minimizing environmental disturbances from the building site. Also by definition, but perhaps less widely recognized, green buildings aim to improve human health through design of healthy indoor environments. The benefits related to reduced energy and water consumption are well-documented, but the potential human health benefits of green buildings are only recently being investigated. The objective of our review was to examine the state of evidence on green building design as it specifically relates to indoor environmental quality and human health. Overall, the initial scientific evidence indicates better indoor environmental quality in green buildings versus non-green buildings, with direct benefits to human health for occupants of those buildings. A limitation of much of the research to date is the reliance on indirect, lagging and subjective measures of health. To address this, we propose a framework for identifying direct, objective and leading "Health Performance Indicators" for use in future studies of buildings and health.
authors.affiliation: Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, 401 Park Drive, 404-L, Boston, MA, 02218, USA, jgallen@hsph.harvard.edu.
authors.forename: Joseph G
authors.initials: JG
authors.lastname: Allen
authors.forename: Piers
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: MacNaughton
authors.forename: Jose Guillermo Cedeno
authors.initials: JG
authors.lastname: Laurent
authors.forename: Skye S
authors.initials: SS
authors.lastname: Flanigan
authors.forename: Erika Sita
authors.initials: ES
authors.lastname: Eitland
authors.forename: John D
authors.initials: JD
authors.lastname: Spengler
mesh_terms: D016902:Air Pollution, Indoor; D003246:Conservation of Energy Resources / Q000379:methods*; D004777:Environment; D005160:Facility Design and Construction; D006304:Health Status; D006801:Humans; D018877:Sick Building Syndrome / Q000517:prevention & control