Tom Lent

Retired

The substitution of hazardous substances with safer alternatives is being driven by policy pressures and business demands. As a result, scientific techniques for chemical alternatives assessment (CAA) have been established and communities of practice are emerging. Interest in safer chemical substitution is widely shared throughout a range of stakeh...

Walk Bike Berkeley produced an analysis of e-bikes in November 2019 for the City of Berkeley California's Electric Mobility Roadmap. Berkeley's 2019 Roadmap sought to reduce the City's climate emissions from transportation, primarily through switching to electric vehicles. The Walk Bike Berkeley report compared e-bikes to gas and electric powered c...

There is no question that investing in energy-efficiency upgrades has the potential to deliver substantial financial, environmental, and health benefits to building owners and residents. Robust evidence demonstrates that interventions such as weatherization and other energy-efficiency upgrades, particularly in poor quality housing, can significantl...

Healthy Building Network's report on post-consumer carpet feedstocks calls for eliminating over 40 highly toxic chemicals in carpets that threaten public health and impede recycling. These toxics are known to cause respiratory disease, heart attacks, cancer, and asthma, and impair children's developmental health. The report outlines strategies to p...

Global industry has made progress toward a world in which more efficient use of resources, including recycling, helps to reduce impacts on the natural systems that support life. However, contamination of recycled-content raw material (or “feedstock”) with potentially toxic substances reduces feedstock value, impedes growth of recycling rates, and c...

The conclusions of this research make a compelling case for taking BART for the daily commute on economic, environmental and energy saving grounds. Key findings are that a typical East Bay commuter who takes BART instead of driving a midsize car to a downtown San Francisco job: • • • can realize direct economic savings exceeding $5,000 per year, av...

Comparative analysis of 5 programs that address material health in buildings: * Clean Production Action's (CPA's) GreenScreen® for Safer Chemicals (GS) * Cradle to Cradle (C2C) Products Innovation Institute's C2C CertifiedCM Product Standard * Healthy Building Network's Pharos Chemical & Material Library (CML) and Building Product Library (BPL) * H...

This article addresses resilient flooring, evaluating the potential health effects of vinyl flooring and the leading alternatives-synthetic rubber, polyolefin, and linoleum-currently used in the healthcare marketplace. The study inventories chemicals incorporated as components of each of the four material types or involved in their life cycle as fe...

Climate change is only one of a series of challenges for which members of the scientific community are suggesting urgent action on a global scale to avoid irreversible health, environmental and social damage. Labels and standards can play an important role in transforming our material economy to address these problems. Current trends in standard se...

Awareness is growing in the design community of the need to account for impacts throughout the life cycle when assessing the environmental characteristics of materials. Until recently, Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) tools to help rationalize this intricate task have been inaccessible to most due to the need for complex software tools and expensive pro...

The collapse of the Soviet Union and dissolution of the socialist bloc at the end of the 1980s brought an end to trading terms that had allowed Cuba to trade sugar for oil and other imports at favourable rates, an arrangement that had helped Cuba rapidly develop its economy. The United States intensified the economic embargo on Cuba, making access...

An analysis of whether natural gas provides a useful bridge fuel to ease the transition between oil and gas and renewable energy sources. Findings include that leakage of high global warming coefficient methane from the exploration and transport infrastructure may be undoing any climate benefit from the reduced carbon dioxide emissions from combust...

1. OVERVIEW Awareness is growing in the design community of the need to account for impacts throughout the life cycle when assessing the environmental characteristics of materials. Until recently, Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) tools to help rationalize this intricate task have been inaccessible to most due to the need for complex software tools and e...