Home Performance – Corbett & Grace Lunsford New Series on the Scientific Study of Home Chemistry
This video is an overview of what’s coming up in a new series on Corbett and Grace Lunsford’s Home Performance Youtube channel, and it’s about “Home Chemistry”. Over the last 10 years a group of scientists have been studying the effects of chemicals and chemical reactions in actual homes and how they might affect human health. They also report on the micro-biology within the home and how those chemicals can alter it – usually for the worse.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J2iHOCI2hz4&t=1529s
The overview is quite fascinating on its own, but each upcoming video in the series will do a much deeper dive into a particular topic or area of study. As they point out in the overview, most building scientists focus on the “physics” of a building – how air, water and vapor move through it and affect it – but this is the first major scientific study on the indoor “chemistry” of a building.
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Replies
Well.... idk about these two. I get it, we are putting a lot of chemicals into our houses that we don't understand, or how they react, and I'm sure there are a fair number of them that are harmful that we should limit.
My issue with these two is they don't know what they are talking about and so they see a graph that says a certain class of chemical or specific chemical is higher in concentration and then they make these theoretical jumps to say its bad for us. Its essentially the old model of medicine where people would know a small fact and draw out these unfounded assumptions, only to realize that is not actually how it works. Its the theory vs evidence based model.
Again, I am certainly not saying that the experts they interview won't have a good sense of what they are talking about, though I would be most interested in the epidemiologist. But really, what data are they going to be able to draw on that will actually have value? is there some large trial of individuals that live in chemical free houses?
Have either of these presenters actually read a scientific paper discussing the health effects of essential oils? More specifically one that actually looks at health outcomes.
Lastly, I don't want to live in a smell free house because smells cause cancer. There are probably an infinite number of carcinogens, including apparently hot beverages and red meat and alcohol and..... I would like to be able to smell my food and not spend every waking hour worrying about whether this smell or that is going to make me live a few years longer.
I think they are putting the cart before the horse. It is great that this research is being done. I just feel like they are making judgements and suggestions based on incomplete or infantile science. And once you hear something, it is very hard to unhear/believe it. They would do well to phrase their videos closer to how the scientists write their papers, with caution. But that's just me.....
Whenever someone starts talking about "chemicals" my BS detector goes off. You can't divide the world into "chemicals" and "non-chemicals."
I had the same response when I first saw the video. I had to turn it off pretty early in. I think he has good information in some of his videos, just a bit long winded.
Whatever you may personally think about Corbett and Grace, I think the point of the video series will be a focus on what these scientists discovered and how, or if, it is relevant to building design. Twenty years ago nobody thought about or cared about putting an HRV or ERV into their homes or whether they should invest in an air source heat pump because nobody knew if they worked. Now the research of building scientists like Joe Lstiburek and others are being accepted and integrated into "modern" building design.
I would like to see what these "chemical" scientists discovered over the last ten years of testing before rushing to judgement - in short, don't shoot the messenger.