Jan 24 2008
GREENGUARD Environmental Institute (GEI), the pre-eminent brand in indoor air quality, congratulates the recipients for this year's Ken Dillon Memorial Fellowship for Indoor Environmental Quality Design. Two proposals from prominent graduate programs will receive grants for $3,500 to investigate critical issues to the professional building community, ranging from the role of the architect in developing healthy indoor environments to the presence of phthalates, a potentially dangerous chemical in indoor air.
"We are pleased to see that indoor air quality continues to be a topic of interest for students as demonstrated by this year's impressive applications," says Carl Smith, GEI CEO. "We believe the results of these studies will support GEI's mission to protect quality of life and public health through healthier indoor environments."
Ms Kelly Cook and Ms Pamela Harght, graduate students at The University of Kansas, School of Architecture & Urban Planning, will focus on "Indoor Air Quality in Healthcare Design." Cook and Harght's study will analyze how the design process develops within architecture firms. They will extensively survey US architecture firms to assess how building design affects indoor air in hospitals and other healthcare facilities.
Ms Ying Xu, a graduate student in Civil and Environmental Engineering at Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, will study the "Emission of Phthalates from Building Materials and Their Interaction with Airborne Particles." Phthalates have been shown to have a wide range of adverse effects on reproduction and development, including decreased fertility, birth defects, hormone disruption, and reproductive malformations. Recently, several countries and the State of California have banned the use of phthalates in the manufacture of toys. As such, Xu's study will provide insight to building professionals who are interested in predicting and understanding exposure and risk in a wide range of environmental scenarios.
Awarded in memory of Dr. Henry Kenneth Dillon, a founding member of the GEI Advisory Board and Associate Professor of Environmental Health Sciences at the University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB), the fellowship is awarded each year to help promote the study of indoor air quality and its effect on health and/or productivity.
To apply for the Ken Dillon Memorial Fellowship, please visit the GREENGUARD Website or send an email request to [email protected]. Applications for the 2009 fellowship will be accepted until December 31, 2008 at 5:00 p.m. EST.