BUILT ENVIRONMENT
Healthy Affordable Materials Project
The Healthy Affordable Materials Project is dedicated to eliminating toxic materials in building products.
HAMP is creating a future that minimizes toxic chemical exposures by creating and sharing knowledge, education, and tools to transform the market to healthier affordable materials with the greatest benefit to the most vulnerable communities.
To date, HAMP has successfully institutionalized the culture of transparency in the built environment and shared the best available chemical hazard information through Pharos and product ingredient disclosures using the Health Product Declaration Standard.
Although product ingredient disclosure is on the rise, chemical hazard information has plateaued, and safer chemistry information remains elusive. There is an urgency to fill chemical data gaps and identify safer alternatives in order to improve human health, especially for children and BIPOC populations who are disproportionately impacted throughout a product’s life cycle.
ChemFORWARD Joins HAMP
Starting in April, 2023, ChemFORWARD will support HAMP by:
Filling critical data gaps to improve data quality and identify potentially safer alternatives. They will begin by analyzing HPD meta-data, prioritizing the highest value data gaps relevant to affordable housing, and procuring up to 30 chemical hazard assessments from third-party toxicologists that will populate ChemFORWARDs shared repository. This work will serve as a demonstration project for how a shared repository can support HAMP and the built environment supply chain to avoid regrettable substitution and proactively design with safer chemistry.
Integrating the HPD, Pharos, and ChemFORWARD platforms to enable manufacturers to seamlessly access comprehensive chemical hazard data and safer alternatives.
Working with HAMP partners to activate manufacturers to move beyond disclosure and compliance with affordable access to safer alternatives and launching an industry campaign to incentivize manufacturers to fill data gaps (at their own expense) and prefer safer chemistry.
Integrating ChemFORWARD’s tested strategies and collaborative, user-centered approach directly into our HAMP programs and IT systems will activate the built environment supply chain to move from chemical hazards that are unknown to known and from known to safer.
ABOUT THE INITIATIVE
The Healthy Affordable Materials Project is a multi-year collaboration supported by JPB Foundation and guided by a board of expert advisors.
Partners include:
Healthy Building Network is reducing the use of hazardous chemicals in building products through scientific research, education, and tools that allow designers and building owners to specify less toxic products that improve human and environmental health, and social equity outcomes.
The Healthy Materials Lab design research lab is dedicated to supporting designers, architects, contractors, and developers to create healthier places for all people to live.
The Green Science Policy Institute (GSP) facilitates the responsible use of chemicals to protect human and ecological health. The Institute educates and builds partnerships among scientists, regulators, businesses, and public interest groups to develop innovative solutions for reducing harmful chemicals in products.
The Health Product Declaration® Collaborative (HPDC) is a member organization committed to a built environment that is safer and healthier, through transparency and collaborative innovation. HPDC oversees the HPD Open Standard, the most widely used format for the accurate reporting of material contents and associated health information for building products.
