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

Our plain-English summary of People, planet and profit: Unintended consequences of legacy building materials, by A.T. Zimmer, H. Ha (Journal of Environmental Management, 2017).

The study

• Authors: A.T. Zimmer, H. Ha
• Journal: Journal of Environmental Management
• Published: 2017;204(Pt 1):472-485
• Type of article: Review
• Cited by: 3 articles, as counted by NIH iCite
• Read it: PubMed · Publisher · Free full text

Abstract

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.

Published by Elsevier Ltd.

In plain English

This review, by two authors at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, used publicly available data from government agencies and published literature to compare the history of lead and asbestos as building materials in the United States. It collected no new health data. Drawing on cited sources, the authors put total estimated U.S. costs of lead and asbestos abatement and litigation near $2.1 trillion in constant 2014 dollars, with actual costs incurred so far of $272 to $359 billion. Actual building asbestos abatement costs were about $131 to $175 billion. About 730,000 individuals filed asbestos injury claims through 2002. A cited 1991 report found that airborne asbestos levels rose after abatement in 13 of 23 projects. The authors cited higher mesothelioma risks for amosite and crocidolite than for chrysotile. They noted that over 95% of asbestos in building materials was chrysotile, and argued that removing intact chrysotile materials may have been costly and potentially unnecessary. They estimated that roughly $24 million of up-front research could have prevented the incurred costs. The authors concluded that research before a material is widely used potentially represents a more cost-effective approach. Their incurred-cost totals leave out remediation before 1985 and litigation after 2002.

We wrote this plain-English summary from the full article with the help of AI, and a second AI model checked each sentence against the article. It is not the authors' wording; the abstract and the article are their own account.

What the study did and found

• Design: Review and synthesis of publicly available data (government agency and peer-reviewed sources), presented mainly as time-series plots and descriptive statistics, with a cost comparison
• Who was studied: No study population of people. The authors compiled publicly available U.S. data on lead and asbestos in buildings, including about 30 million homes and about 2.2 million public and commercial buildings estimated to contain asbestos.
• Exposure: Lead and asbestos used as building materials. For asbestos, the article discusses chrysotile (a serpentine) and the amphiboles amosite and crocidolite, as well as synthetic vitreous fibers used as asbestos substitutes.
• Main results:
  • Total estimated U.S. costs of lead and asbestos abatement and litigation were expected to approach $2.1 trillion in constant 2014 dollars. Actual incurred costs were $272 to $359 billion.
  • Actual incurred costs of asbestos abatement in buildings were approximately $131 to $175 billion. Removal for about 2.2 million public and commercial buildings was estimated at as high as $324 billion. Residential removal was estimated at as high as $300 billion, based on an assumed average of $10,000 per home for about 30 million homes.
  • Citing other sources, the authors reported that 730,000 individuals filed asbestos injury claims through 2002. Cumulative asbestos litigation costs were $92 billion, with a predicted cost of $349 billion. About 59% of total asbestos litigation costs went to legal fees: 29% to plaintiffs' fees and 30% to defense fees.
  • Citing a 1991 Health Effects Institute report: of 23 projects that measured asbestos abatement effectiveness, airborne asbestos levels after abatement were higher in 13 projects, by up to one order of magnitude compared with levels before abatement.
  • Citing other sources, the authors reported that the relative mesothelioma risks of amosite and crocidolite were 100 and 500 times greater, respectively, than that of chrysotile. They also reported that over 95% of asbestos used in building materials is chrysotile. They argued that overestimating building occupants' health risk may have led to costly and potentially unnecessary removal of intact chrysotile building materials.
  • Asbestos production shifted to less developed countries. Russia, Kazakhstan, China, Brazil, Zimbabwe and India accounted for over 95% of global asbestos production since 2005. Occupational exposure levels reported in China and India were one to three orders of magnitude higher than the current U.S. OSHA permissible exposure limit.
  • The authors estimated that investing about $24 million (an upper-bound estimate, in 2014 constant dollars) in up-front research on lead and asbestos could have prevented the $272 to $359 billion in incurred costs. They described this as an 11,000 to 92,500 fold reduction in remediation and litigation costs.
• The authors' conclusion: The authors concluded that, given the rapid rise in new building materials, researching their potential health and environmental consequences before broad use potentially represents a more cost-effective approach.
• Limitations the authors state:
  • Actual incurred costs exclude remediation costs before 1985 and litigation costs after 2002, because no references were found for them.
  • No references were found for residential asbestos remediation costs, so the residential figure rests on an assumed average cost per home.
  • The authors acknowledged that each category of data source has potential for bias.

Related studies

• Worker exposure to asbestos during removal of sprayed material and renovation activity in buildings containing sprayed material — N.W. Paik, R.J. Walcott, et al. (1983)
• Asbestos release from whole-building demolition of buildings with asbestos-containing material — R.A. Perkins, J. Hargesheimer, et al. (2007)
• Respiratory morbidity in workers exposed to asbestos in the primary manufacture of building materials — T.G. Robins, M.A. Green (1988)
• Thorium determination in intercomparison samples and in some Romanian building materials by gamma ray spectrometry — A. Pantelica, I.I. Georgescu, et al. (2001)
• Mesothelioma among employees with likely contact with in-place asbestos-containing building materials — H.A. Anderson, L.P. Hanrahan, et al. (1991)
• Assessment of alpha activity of building materials commonly used in West Bengal, India — D. Ghosh, A. Deb, et al. (2008)

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