Engineers offer incendiary take on LEED project site accident rates

Sources: CP staff; American Society of Safety Engineers (ASSE), Chicago

Widely used, certification-driven design elements and construction practices result in LEED-geared projects incurring higher Occupational Safety and Health Administration-recordable injury rates than conventional jobs, concludes a peer-reviewed feature in the June ASSE Professional Safety journal.

“Sustainable Buildings — Applying Prevention Through Design” (PTD) authors Mohammed Albattah, Marielle Roucheray and Matthew Hallowell contend that beyond environmental impact, utility cost reduction and building occupant health, sustainability criteria should include construction workers’ health and safety. They reflect on that factor as central to PTD; recent research identifying specific exposures to hazards connected to sustainable building components; and, methods of risk mitigation provided in a web-based tool that organizes PTD information into a single decision support system. — www.asse.org/professionalsafety