Built Environments (main)

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Built Environments


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Water Droplets Banner.jpg Chemicals and Swimming Pools Last Updated on 2010-11-14 00:00:00 Swimmer, Protect Thyself: Cleaning Up the Pool Environment This article, written by Angela Spivey, appeared first in Environmental Health Perspectives—the peer-reviewed, open access journal of the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences. The article is a verbatim version of the original and is not available for edits or additions by Encyclopedia of Earth editors or authors. Companion articles on the same topic that are editable may exist within the Encyclopedia of Earth. In 2006 a 6-year-old Nebraska boy was treated in a hospital intensive care unit for respiratory distress caused by chemical inflammation and swelling of his airways after spending three hours swimming in an indoor motel pool. Twenty-four other people who visited the pool in the same time period experienced milder eye and respiratory irritation. The pool was closed the next... More »
Green building.jpg Green building (Built Environments) Last Updated on 2009-08-31 00:00:00 Green building is the practice of increasing the efficiency with which buildings use resources — energy, water, and materials — thereby reducing a building’s impact on human health and the environment through better siting, design, construction, operation, maintenance, and deconstruction. This practice can also be referred to as sustainable design or green architecture. Green buildings are designed to reduce the overall impact of the built environment on human health and the natural environment by efficiently using energy, water, and other resources, protecting occupant health, improving employee productivity in commercial buildings, and reducing waste, pollution, and environmental degradation. Sustainability is a related concept that is integral to green building. Effectively using the concepts of sustainability while building will lead to reduced... More »