By Guest Author Joe Lederman

In the home design and construction world, there are many additional responsibilities home owners have. Highly regarded throughout the 20th century, asbestos was the pinnacle of building materials, containing flame resistant and durable qualities that industries sought out. Fueling many aspects of life in the United States, environmental sustainability is on the minds of citizens and those involved in construction in many states.

Potential home buyers, designers or those involved in construction should be aware that homes may contain asbestos and other obsolete methods of construction. This isn’t to make you worried because asbestos exposure is easily prevented by taking simple precautions. There are now many green Eco-friendly design alternatives that replace the need for harmful asbestos and can reduce annual energy costs in the home.

If you locate asbestos in the home, you shouldn’t panic. Most asbestos that is in good condition does not pose any health risks. Most experts suggest leaving it undisturbed until an inspector can determine the legitimacy of concerns. Asbestos still regularly appears in roof shingles, dry wall, attic insulation, popcorn ceilings, joint compounds and electrical wires.

Frequent exposure to airborne asbestos fibers may lead to the development of peritoneal mesothelioma, a rare but severe form of asbestos lung cancer. Manufacturers of asbestos were aware of its toxic qualities, but repressed any evidence that demonstrated that. The amount of asbestos incidents has lead to mesothelioma lawyer firms fighting for victim rights. Thousands of workers, citizens and military personnel were wrongfully exposed as a result of the asbestos scandal. This has become known as one of the more formidable cover-ups that took place in the 20th century.

Green: Better for Your Health and Your Pocket

Most people are unaware to the fact that Eco-friendly products can cut energy costs by 25 to 35 % per year. Many cities in the U.S. have created lumberyards which re-store where you can purchase recycled building materials that are authentically strong and inexpensive. Rather than expensive and mal-treated wood, interior walls can be made from steel and concrete, avoiding many of the problems associated with asbestos and other insulation methods. Green alternatives to asbestos include the use of cotton fiber, lcynene foam and cellulose.

Cotton fiber is also becoming a favorite insulation method. Made from recycled batted material, it is then treated to be fireproof. Water based spray polyurethane foam, Icynene, is a healthy insulation which contains no toxic components. These new environmentally-sustainable alternatives create healthier, quieter and more energy efficient homes in the 21st century.

Joe Lederman is the Awareness Coordinator at the Mesothelioma Cancer Center. (www.asbestos.com) For more information also visit The Mesolthelioma & Asbestos Awareness Center at http://www.maacenter.org/.

See? Like a tomato.

A home is like a tomato. When seeking one out, you just can’t go for size, you’ve got to go for taste.  There is not much that excites me as the topic of green homes does.  I mean green like quality, endurance, longevity, and functionality. If something does not do its job well, it will not be used for long.  A home that is not comfortable, useful, and affordable is a home in the landfill.  Quite possibly the only topic that could get me going more than the topic of green homes is the topic of America embracing a more thorough definition of what a green home actually is.  For a home with solar panels, geothermal heat, FSC certified wood and no-VOC furniture is not green if it has 8,000 square feet of living space for two people and a dog.  And a cat.  And four children.  It is just too big to be considered green due to the exorbitant rate of consumption of materials during construction and energy throughout its lifespan.

Getting back to me being excited, this is why I flipped over the recent article in Trim Tab, a new quarterly e-magazine that highlights green building trends published by the Cascadia Region Green Building Council. The article talks about Sarah Susanka’s book series, from which one of my favorite books comes; The Not So Big House: A Blueprint For the Way We Really Live. If you are interested in these two things, you will thoroughly enjoy this read:

1) how the design of your home effects your health and well-being

2) how the size of your home effects your health, well-being, and wallet

It conceptualizes how “The American Dream Home” has transformed over the last several decades and reveals blunt truths about McMansions, over-sized, empty boxes that are built using cheap materials and are poorly designed. In other words, a large investment that does not give a fraction of the satisfaction or longevity you expect of it and, to top it off, grossly increases your carbon footprint and energy bills. Not So Big gives solutions to many of the obstacles we encounter in the quest for a dream home, like how to get good design on a budget and how to figure out what size home works for you. It also plunges into detail about how subtle design moves are the ones that create the most treasured nuances in a home and how you can achieve them with very little space.

Trim Tab’s article gives so many great pieces of information that make your Green Home IQ sky-rocket. Not only does it steer you towards one of the most useful books regarding home design, it sums up how the issue of wanting ‘too much house’ has become grossly out of control and unnecessary. It gives statistics that show the trend in increasing square footage in single family homes and underlines the need for quality design and materials to create homes that are comfortable and long-lasting and work with our lifestyles without energy-gorging. The idea is to build smaller and smarter. It’s kind of like going with that organic, medium sized farm-stand tomato instead of the colossal, wan, peaked hybrid that was grown using chemical fertilizers and contains one tenth of the vitamins and flavor of the former.

You can find the article here in Trim Tab. It is free.

photo source: http://www.worth1000.com/emailthis.asp?entry=251912