Understanding your materials: Health Product Declaration (HPD)

What is a  Health Product Declaration?

The Health Product Declaration ® (HPD) Open Standard is a reporting format that supports building professionals’ informed decisions by providing information on the contents of building products, along with the potential health-related hazards of those contents. HPDs are created by manufacturers for their products. Completed HPDs disclose ingredients of building materials with varying ingredient thresholds as low as 100 ppm, as delivered to the job site.

Application to practice

Requesting HPDs from manufacturers opens the gateway to greater transparency of material ingredients and their potential health impacts.  HPDs disclose data, but do not provide analysis or recommendations. We recommend designers either consult with a materials science professional to evaluate the information, reference guidance to meet standards included in the Applicable Certifications section below or qualify products based on whether they do or don't offer an HPD.

Governing organization

The HPD standard is maintained by the Health Product Declaration Collaborative (HPDC), which describes itself a “not-for-profit, member organization dedicated to improving the building industry’s performance through transparency, openness and innovation in the practices of reporting, disclosure, specification and selection of building products.”

Standards used

HPD Open Standard. This standard is updated on a regular basis, to reflect growing understanding of material health practices. As of May 2017, the standard has been updated to Version 2.1. HPDC provides the “HPD Builder” tool to manufacturers and third parties for use in creating HPDs. The HPD Public Repository is also provided by HPDC, and is the authoritative source for published HPDs.

Verification levels and availability

Details publicly available for:

First-party verifications

The manufacturer makes claims about the chemicals and materials present in the product, with disclosure thresholds for chemicals varying from 100 to 10,000 ppm. The HPD requires self-policing and feedback from the sector to ensure accuracy. In these cases, the HPD is “self-prepared” but not verified.

Second-party verifications

The party has a financial interest in the transaction: Not applicable to HPDs.

Third-party verifications

An independent assessment that specific requirements have been met: While third-party verification is not required, it is an option being piloted for producers creating a HPD. HPDs can only be verified by approved verification organizations (see website).

Product CSI division and types

All; primarily Div 3-16, 22 and 23

Costs

Access to the HPD Public Repository is free-of-charge. This resource substantially reduces the cost to building professionals of finding HPDs, since all published HPDs are included in the Repository. The cost to create an HPD can vary significantly by manufacturer and product, though HPDs do tend to reduce the burden on product manufacturers juggling multiple types of information requests and reporting formats by providing one standardized, widely available format that can be referenced by other certifications requiring the same information. HPDC hosts a Harmonization Technical Sub-Group dedicated to reducing duplication and overlap in material health information within the building industry.

Scope

Limited to the product level and to information related to human health:

• The Chemical Inventory collects relevant documentation and lists the product contents.
• List-Based Screening uses the HPD Priority Hazards List, the GreenScreen List Translator, and the GreenScreen assessment, when available.
• HPDs do not necessarily include any assessment of impacts to human and environmental health or optimization for healthy alternatives to the hazardous materials found within the product, although there is opportunity for the manufacturer to include additional information along these lines.

Applicable certifications

Applicable to: LEED v4, WELL, LBC (ingredient list for reference)

Not Applicable to: BREEAM, Green Globes, LEED 2009

Additional resources

The HPDC Support System offers additional information on HPD Collaborative and HPDs, including FAQs. Additional training videos and a Project Team User Guide are also available.

Designers can find HPDs published in the HPD Public Repository on HPD Collaborative’s website.

SmithgroupJJR publishes the HPD Library, a searchable database that contains hundreds of HPDs which owners and designers can access, free of charge, to assist in their design or LEED documentation processes.