The story of the Sambhavna Clinic, a non-profit holistic health clinic in Bhopal, India, built to treat those injured by the Union Carbide toxic gas release in 1984. enlarge video
Sustainable Resilient Flooring Choices for Hospitals
Authors: Jennifer DuBose and Amaya Labrador
December 2010. 56 pages.
Summary
The objective of this study was to examine the recent experiences that architects, installers, facility managers and users have had with alternative, green resilient flooring materials in hospital settings. This research effort focused on specific resilient flooring materials, including rubber, polyolefin and linoleum. Sharing the user experiences is expected to demystify these lesser-known products, identify key issues, and potentially lead to increased adoption.
The study builds on the Health Care Research Collaborative
paper, “Resilient Flooring & Chemical Hazards: A Comparative Analysis of Vinyl and Other Alternatives for Health Care,” researched and authored in 2009 by the Healthy Building Network (HBN), which inventoried the chemicals involved in four flooring material types (vinyl, linoleum, rubber and polyolefin) and characterized those chemicals using a chemical hazard-based framework. In the present study, we sought to hear directly from users about their perceptions and experiences. As such, the study used two methods for getting user feedback: an online survey of and a series of interviews with architects, flooring installers and facility managers.
