Page 7 - Green Builder Magazine June 2015 Issue

Home Depot to Phase Out Phthalates
Big-box giant Home Depot
has announced it will no longer 5
sell vinyl flooring that contains
phthalate plasticizers. PHOTO CREDIT: WESTPORTWIKI

HBY BILL WALSH Domino Effect. Home Depot’s announcement will likely www.greenbuildermedia.com 06.2015
OME DEPOT, THE WORLD’S LARGEST spur other companies to follow suit.
purchaser of building products, recently
announced that it plans to phase out vinyl flooring disruption, in turn, can lead to the development of asthma
products that contain phthalate plasticizers. These known and genital deformities in boys.
endocrine disrupters have been banned from children’s
products since 2008 but continue to be used in a wide The HBN first addressed the issue of phthalate
range of vinyl products to make them flexible. substitution in polyvinyl chloride (PVC or “vinyl”) flooring in a
2014 report, Phthalate-free Plasticizers in PVC. The analysis
The announcement came after lengthy negotiations was intended to help purchasers evaluate the claims of
led by the Mind the Store campaign, a grassroots effort phthalate-free product lines in order to make informed
supported by the Healthy Building Network’s (HBN) choices about a wide array of materials, including flooring.
cutting-edge research on building products. Mind the
Store is challenging the country’s largest retailers to restrict Learn more: www.saferchemicals.org
100 hazardous chemicals in the products they sell. The
campaign also recently released a report on phthalates and
other chemical hazards detected in vinyl flooring products.

PVC sheet floors can contain over 20 percent phthalate
plasticizers. These semi-volatile organic compounds readily
migrate from flooring into dust and are inhaled by building
occupants. Researchers are finding that exposures to
phthalates occur in the womb as well as after birth and can
impair the development of lungs and immune systems. This

AVAILABLE NOW: CREDIT: AXIOM EXERGY

New Refrigeration Battery

Axiom Exergy has developed a solution for supermarkets that allows
them to store energy for peak cooling times.

AXIOM EXERGY RECENTLY announced the availability
of its breakthrough energy storage and backup cooling
technology. The company claims its Refrigeration
Battery solves a major technical problem that businesses
with high refrigeration loads have been unable to address until
now: the inability to actively manage unintelligent refrigeration
systems that consume more than 50 percent of the energy in
a typical supermarket. The Refrigeration Battery is comprised of
a system integrator, thermal storage tanks and wireless sensors,
which connect to the building’s electric meter. It stores energy for
later use by freezing water in the tanks at night, when electricity
is less expensive. The energy can be discharged during the
afternoon, enabling a store to turn off its refrigeration system’s
compressors and condensers during these peak demand periods.

The Refrigeration Battery is now available in California.
Learn more at www.axiomexergy.com