Dr. Karen Wang from the Collaborative for Health and The Environment and Because Health, and Amy King from GoodWork US, join Healthy Living Healthy Planet to speak about healthy homes, workspaces and the built environment.
As we shelter in place and spend even more time indoors Dr. Wang explains that the average person spends nearly 90% of their time indoors on a regular basis. In our current state, it’s nearly 100% for many. Not only do we spend our time indoors, we bring our comforts inside as well, from furniture, to toys and electronics. Our buildings, furnishings and entertainment materials impact our built environment and contribute to serious pollution and toxic leaching. From flame retardant furniture to lead paint, the list goes on. Dr. Wang shares her personal experience making her home healthy and the journey of researching to truly find out what is in our products and building materials. While we may not all be able to build our homes from scratch, we can make better choices in our products, choose better pots and pans, glass and stainless steal food storage, and body safe cleaning products (beware of fragranced cleaning products).
Amy King speaks about healthy workplaces. Co-working spaces are shared work places for entrepreneurs. GoodWork is a green building co-working space, rehabilitated from a vacant 1950’s two floor warehouse. Recycling buildings is not often done, especially in Texas, but Amy and her business partner saw the potential and revitalized their co-working building with WELL and LEED building. GoodWork’s rehabilitation has helped to inspire the rest of the built environment in the neighborhood to come back to life. Amy explains “sick building syndrome” and her experience working in a sick building - marked by old mechanical systems, old air filters, toxic carpets and un-opening windows, resulting in the well-known 3 PM headache. But there is hope, businesses and their employees can make change, by advocating for their health, and pursuing local green building rating systems to access their workspaces and make change.
Building’s are one of the top three offenders in climate change, our built environment, natural environment and human health are all connected. To improve the health of one, we must improve the health of all.
Visit https://www.becausehealth.org to tap into great cleaning products and tips to make your produce last while sheltering in place.
Visit https://goodcoworking.co/blog-press for ideas about how to make your home workspace greener and cleaner, and a safe space to work away from home in the future.
Visit https://earthx.org/ to be a part of their virtual expo April 22nd-27th.
Visit https://nadallas.com for resources to boost your immune system and stay healthy.
