People, planet and profit: Unintended consequences of legacy building materials

Although an explosion of new building materials are being introduced into today's market, adequate up-front research into their chemical and physical properties as well as their potential health and environmental consequences is lacking. History has provided us with several examples where building materials were broadly deployed into society only to find that health and environmental problems resulted in unintended sustainability consequences. In the following paper, we use lead and asbestos as legacy building materials to show their similar historical trends and sustainability consequences. Our research findings show unintended consequences such as: increased remediation and litigation costs; adverse health effects; offshoring of related industries; and impediments to urban revitalization. As numerous new building materials enter today's market, another building material may have already been deployed, representing the next "asbestos." This paper also proposes an alternative methodology that can be applied in a cost-effective way into existing and upcoming building materials, to minimize and prevent potential unintended consequences and create a pathway for sustainable communities. For instance, our findings show that this proposed methodology could have prevented the unintended incurred sustainability costs of approximately $272-$359 billion by investing roughly $24 million in constant 2014 U.S. dollars on up-front research into lead and asbestos.

MTBE: A poster child for exposure assessment as central to effective TSCA reform

Advanced exposure assessment is vital to improving the Toxic Substances Control Act.

Octane and the environment

One of the most important technical issues of the automotive fuel regulatory regime that has evolved in the United States since 1973 is the need to provide sufficient octane while at the same time meeting increasingly stringent fuel content requirements designed to reduce emissions and protect public health. There are several ways for refiners to provide octane and all of them have environmental consequences. This paper traces the technological and environmental trade-offs that have occurred from initial lead reduction rules in 1973 through the first phase of the reformulated gasoline program ending in 2000. Overall, increasingly stringent fuel regulations during this period have contributed to significant declines in pollutant emissions and concurrent reductions in risks to public health. Each improvement, however, was accompanied by a unique trade-off that sometimes led to unintended consequences. To address these trade-offs as they emerged, more regulation was required and additional trade-offs resulted. This analysis suggests that the complex process of gasoline regulation and the technological response to maintain octane quality is characterized by the continual emergence of new risks as the regulatory system evolves. This pattern demonstrates the omnipresence of risk trade-offs and potential for unintended consequences to occur as a result. Public perception, regulatory design, and technological choice influence the nature of these trade-offs and play an important role in addressing unintended consequences.

The precautionary principle also applies to public health actions

The precautionary principle asserts that the burden of proof for potentially harmful actions by industry or government rests on the assurance of safety and that when there are threats of serious damage, scientific uncertainty must be resolved in favor of prevention. Yet we in public health are sometimes guilty of not adhering to this principle. Examples of actions with unintended negative consequences include the addition of methyl tert-butyl ether to gasoline in the United States to decrease air pollution, the drilling of tube wells in Bangladesh to avoid surface water microbial contamination, and villagewide parenteral antischistosomiasis therapy in Egypt. Each of these actions had unintended negative consequences. Lessons include the importance of multidisciplinary approaches to public health and the value of risk-benefit analysis, of public health surveillance, and of a functioning tort system-all of which contribute to effective precautionary approaches.