Toxicity of Building Materials

Introduction: types of potentially toxic building materials

F. Pacheco-Torgal,     University of Minho, Portugal

The construction industry is one of the largest and most active sectors in the world and in the next decades will keep on growing at a very fast pace. For instance, China will need 40 billion square meters of combined residential and commercial floor space over the next 20 years – equivalent to adding one New York every two years (Pacheco-Torgal and Jalali, 2011). Buildings have high energy consumption and account for a significant part of carbon dioxide emissions. Since 1930 more than 100,000 new chemical compounds have been developed, and insufficient information exists for health assessments of 95% of chemicals that are used ...