Being well

Sustainability expert Dave Cheshire investigates the invisible toxins inside homes and offices and the revolutionary new certification setting standards for healthier buildings

Give me shelter

Buildings were originally created to protect us from a hostile world. Now that there are fewer large carnivores lurking outside, we are much safer. But what if the structures designed to protect us are also damaging our health?

The concept of health and wellbeing is nothing new. It was a major component in the original Building Research Establishment Environmental Assessment Methodology (BREEAM) 1990 New Offices scheme and has moved up the agenda in the past two years thanks partly to the World Green Building Council’s 2015 Health, Wellbeing and Productivity in Offices report that made the case for health and wellbeing and the relationship with productivity.

New kid on the block

Today, a new certification is making waves. Launched in 2014, the WELL Building Standard is the world’s first building certification that focuses exclusively on human health and wellness and is based on seven years of scientific, medical and architectural research.

While some of the common risks to our health today are air-borne pollutants, poor diet and things like stress and lack of sleep, which can weaken the immune system, WELL research has found buildings also have a profound impact on our bodily functions, ranging from our endocrine (hormone production) system through to our nervous system.

Clocking off

Humans need to have a connection to the outside to maintain their circadian rhythms — our internal clock that helps regulates sleep patterns and other physiological processes. Workplaces with deep floorplates cut off access to daylight, corresponding sun angles and colour temperatures (colour characteristics of light), which calibrate our body clocks. Electric light is often the wrong colour temperature, making us alert when we should be winding down for the night, leaving us tired for the following day. The WELL standard requires buildings to be designed with good access to daylight and electric lighting with appropriate colour temperatures.

Breathe

Mechanically ventilated buildings attempt to protect us from some of the air pollutants prevalent in our cities by constantly filtering the air, but this typically only removes the particulates. Meanwhile, we’ve introduced a whole set of toxins into internal environments through microbial contamination of ductwork and volatile organic compounds (VOCs) found in furniture, fittings and even cleaning products.

WELL sets standards for, and measures, the air quality in internal spaces to reduce exposure to contaminants. This is done by a combination of ‘source control’ — removing the contaminants from materials in the first place — and by using good ventilation design to provide enough freshly filtered air into a space. It shows that using underfloor displacement ventilation with ceiling extractors is a far more effective way of bringing fresh air into a space than using overhead ventilation. Displacement ventilation drives contaminated air up and out without cross-contamination with incoming air. In one study, displacement ventilation was shown to be 1.6–6.6 times better than standard air-conditioning.

Stressed out and in

The internal environment can cause us physiological stress by having to ‘cope’ with discomfort caused by glare, relentless grey, noise and cold draughts. The WELL Standard encourages design features that give occupants more control over their environment, allowing them to adjust internal conditions to reduce the need to filter out distractions and put up with discomfort.

The WELL Standard encourages design features that give occupants more control over their environment, allowing them to adjust internal conditions to reduce the need to filter out distractions and put up with discomfort.

Going down WELL

Each level of WELL certification — silver, gold or platinum — requires a number of minimum standards to be met. These preconditions alone set a high standard. The apparent simplicity of the scheme, with one page per ‘feature’, belies the consequences and implications of the design and operational measures that have to be implemented to meet the required performance standards.

For example, the idea of flushing out the building before occupation to expel VOCs from a building’s internal finishes is a sensible idea and is already included in Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) — the US version of BREEAM.

However, this is no overnight exercise. Depending on the size of the building, it can take up to 20 days of running the ventilation system to push the required air volumes through the space. And this can only be started once all the fittings, finishes and furniture have been installed as they are often the source of the pollutants. It is hard to see how those extra weeks are going to fit into the typical project programme.

WELL fed?

WELL food standards are perhaps the hardest to stomach, especially for occupants who like to indulge in unhealthy food. The standards require that drinks available in the building should contain no more than 30 grams of sugar per container, which eliminates lots of fizzy drinks, and food should not contain any trans- fats (partially hydrogenated oil). Trans-fats do not have to be declared in UK foods and many manufacturers have phased it out, but it could still be found in some pies, cakes and biscuits.

Lifelong commitment

WELL has set itself apart from most other building assessment methods because certification is based on actual operational performance. After completion, the building operation is audited and everything that can be measured, is measured.

The audit includes measuring the water and air quality, the lighting colour temperature, radiant temperature, decibel levels and sound reverberation. Design features like the installation of flexible work stations, including the provision of standing desk, are subject to spot checks by the auditor. And it doesn’t stop there. The certification has to be renewed every three years and there is an ongoing commitment to provide records of post-occupancy surveys, maintenance logs and measurement of environmental parameters such as air and water quality — a lifelong commitment.

Lost in translation

WELL was developed in the US, so there are some notable anomalies when applying the standard in the UK. Some of these differences help. A good example is the indoor smoking ban, which is already enshrined in UK law. Equally, our high water treatment and quality standards may help to gain some points, although recent experience shows that water filtration may still be required to meet the high standards in WELL. Some of the ideas like mindful eating and biophilia (the affinity of humans and the natural world) may seem slightly alien to a UK audience, but there is an increasing awareness of these issues, especially among enterprising companies who are competing for employees; they are finding that people choose companies on the quality of the workspace as much as the quality of the work.

WELL balanced

The ‘mind’ section of WELL highlights the link between mental and physical health, with stress being a primary risk factor for many chronic diseases. This section includes having a balanced lifestyle that promotes healthy sleep patterns. To achieve these optional points, organisations would need to have a range of policies that include allowing staff to avoid those notorious ‘red eye’ flights that leave people dazed and confused. Recent experience with WELL has shown that it’s just as important to engage with the HR section of the organisation as it is with the design team for the fit out.

Setting things right

The WELL Standard is currently influencing a very small percentage of buildings, meaning that only a lucky few will be able to benefit from living, working or convalescing in a healthy building. However, this is a new voluntary standard that is setting out how building performance could be improved, which should have an influence on what people consider to be standard practice in the future. Judging by the take-up of WELL in the US, there is certainly a demand for setting higher standards for our buildings.

There seems to be sense in reducing the stresses caused by the work environment from distractions, poor posture, pollutants and by conditions that mess with our body clocks and hormones, especially when linked to chronic conditions. The role of voluntary standards is to take the lead by setting high standards for the few and hopefully influencing the others by turning best practice into business as usual.

Committed  to doing WELL

As one of the first companies outside of the US to deliver WELL Standard projects, we have a number of certified WELL assessors and are currently working on one of only three building projects registered in the UK being built in line with the WELL v1 for New and Existing Interiors standard, which applies to new and existing buildings and addresses the full scope of project design and construction and building operations. We’re also delivering WELL projects across the US, Europe, Middle East, India and Africa region and China, allowing us to share experiences and best practices.