In this fictional use case, the owner of a supermarket in Fayetteville, Arkansas, is interested in reducing his building’s energy costs. In addition, he is also concerned about the impact of his building’s energy use on climate change. In the United States, food sales buildings have the greatest amount of lit floor space of all […]

In this real-life use case, Hopkins Academy, a public middle and senior high school in Hadley, MA, is considering upgrading its aging oil-burning heating system to a ground-source heat pump to save energy and reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. UndauntedK12, a non-profit organization advising K-12 public schools in the energy transition, applied the Co-Benefits of […]

New research from the Healthy Buildings team led by Dr. Anna Young found that indoor dust mimics sex hormones like estrogen and testosterone when it gets into our cells. Every day, we unknowingly breathe in and ingest dust that accumulates inside our buildings. In our study, we found that Human cells exposed to the dust samples […]

The Harvard Healthy Buildings program collaborated with the Harvard Chan Center for Climate, Health, and the Global Environment (C-CHANGE) on a study on the health impacts of energy transitions from coal-fired power plants to other energy sources during the last decade. Here we provide 3 key takeaways from our study. The results of this study show that the […]

The COVID-19 crisis in India has become devastating. Due to the emergence of new variants, it has also become an international global health issue. Our team is proud to support the Harvard India Research Center by translating some of our COVID-19 related research into relevant infographics to increase awareness around precautions to take to reduce spread and […]

In March 2020, the Harvard Healthy Buildings Program completed data collection for the Global CogFx study, an international, one-year study of indoor environmental quality and office worker health and productivity. This week, the first of several papers analyzing data from the Global CogFx study was published.  This first paper evaluated how building operations impacted indoor fine particulate matter (PM2.5) concentrations […]

Every day, we are exposed to mixtures of hundreds of chemicals that are present in the materials and products that surround us in our buildings (Table 1). For example, semi-volatile organic compounds (SVOCs) build up in indoor dust and air and get into our bodies through ingestion, breathing, and direct skin contact. Typical office workers spend about […]

Portable Air Cleaners: Selection and Application Considerations for COVID-19 Risk Reduction The Harvard Healthy Buildings Program published a report on the selection and application considerations of Portable Air Cleaners (PACs) for COVID-19 risk reduction. Engineering controls and Healthy Buildings measures are a key component of the “hierarchy of controls” that should be used in a […]