I was recently made aware of the Living Building Challenge’s list of banned materials and chemicals aka The Red List.
http://cascadiagbc.org/living-future/09/trade-show/red-list
This list contains the usual nefarious suspects such as arsenic, PVC, lead, mercury, phthalates, CFCs, etc. Why are neoprene and polyurethane on the list? This is the first I have heard of these chemicals being harmful.
Be careful of absolutes. I believe that you might find yourself prohibiting plywood and fly ash.
Polyurethane is there probably due to the isocyanate component. The quantities, though, go from fairly significant in a resinous, non-catalyzed state to trace amounts. I’ve seen it come up as an issue periodically, but never prohibited - in fact, air quality tests performed during spray application of a polyurethane flooring system on a project in L.A. resulted in detectable levels so low (on the “collection tags” of the spray-gun operators) the ventilation system that had been required was determined to be a non factor. Didn’t do their budget much good.
This was a 1:1 ratio, heated-spray polyurethane - essentially half urethane resin and additives and half iso. Most polyurethane products contain far less isocyanate.
It’ll be interesting to see see where this goes, since most building envelope sealants and many horizontal control joint systems are polyurethane (and this doesn’t even take into account manufactured products). I’ve seen it come up on some kind of “uh-oh!” list every few years and then quietly drop off.
Neoprene I’d guess is there as it’s a chlorinated rubber product. “chlori-anything” is a hot button, it seems.
There goes my wetsuit!
Just to set the record straight, I did not say that I was going to follow this list. I just said that I was made aware of it and curious about it.
I agree about absolutes. Life is too gray to live in a black and white world.
the issue with neoprene is that cadmium is a component of it – and cadmium is on the Red List. This is explained in the Living Building Challenge documents at this locations: https://ilbi.org/lbc
In other news, concerns over the incidence of straw-related respiratory and eye irritation among indentured Hebrew laborers has led the Ramses Administration to ban the use of straw in brickmaking by Pyramid Contractors, Inc.