Antimicrobials Joint Statement

The public health threat posed by COVID-19 has generated significant new demand for antimicrobial products. In the building products industry, that has extended to increased calls for the use of added antimicrobials in the built environment. Antimicrobials serve a valuable role as preservatives in a range of products. However, manufacturers are increasingly called on to incorporate antimicrobials into a wider range of products for a purported public health benefit. Unfortunately, outside of limited studies on copper, no building products with added antimicrobials have been shown to reduce infections in a human population. Health claims for antimicrobials in building products can confuse or mislead consumers who may believe that such a product will protect them, their employees, or their families from the novel coronavirus. In fact, many antimicrobial compounds may harm human health and the environment. As signatories of this memo, we stand behind the following message.

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What We Know About Antimicrobials

• Lack of Proven Positive Human Health Impact: There is little evidence that using building products with added antimicrobials results in reduced infections and disease. Demonstrating this would require epidemiological studies (including randomized controlled trials) showing that building products containing particular antimicrobials reduce the number of people infected with specific pathogens. These studies have generally not been conducted.

• Known Adverse Health Impacts: Antimicrobials are designed to kill or inhibit the growth of microbes. The same features that make these chemicals effective against microbes can harm human health and the environment. More research is needed to understand the extent to which they may do so.

• Antimicrobial Resistance: Studies have shown that microbes are becoming resistant to commonly used antimicrobials, and that exposure to these commonly used antimicrobials can also produce resistance to the antibiotics we depend on to fight disease.

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What We Don't Know

• The Full Extent of Adverse Health Impacts: There are few publicly available hazard assessments of the chemicals most commonly used as antimicrobials.

• Product Content: Disclosure of additives is becoming more prevalent, but antimicrobials often fall below reporting thresholds for transparency documents. Sometimes chemical ingredient information is withheld as proprietary, or trade names covering numerous chemical mixtures are reported, in lieu of reporting the exact chemical ingredient(s). 

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What We Support

In light of these concerns, we support the following:

• Truth in Advertising: Many antimicrobials are added to building products to protect the product from degradation. By law, claims must be limited to that scope. Unfortunately,  advertising claims are sometimes stretched to imply a health benefit that is not supported by evidence. We support unambiguous adherence to relevant product labeling regulations.

• Product Content Disclosure: People have the right to know what chemicals, including which antimicrobials, are used in building products and why. Building product manufacturers should use publicly available content-disclosure tools, such as Declare labels, which are incorporated into the Living Product Challenge, and Health Product Declarations -- in particular, the Antimicrobials Module developed for this purpose by the Health Product Declaration Collaborative (HPDC).

• Assessment of Chemicals: We need more detailed, publicly available hazard assessments (such as GreenScreen for Safer Chemicals™) of chemicals commonly used as antimicrobials.

• Public Health Research: We support real-world research to test the public health benefit of adding antimicrobials in building products before those products are permitted to claim a public health benefit. We recommend following established guidelines for study design and responsible reporting (see for example the CONSORT Statement and ORION Statement) and registering the research project at https://clinicaltrials.gov/.

• Ecosystem Health Research: We support research studying possible emissions of antimicrobial chemicals from products, and related environmental impacts. 

• Adherence to the Precautionary Principle: When no public health benefit has been established, we oppose the use of added antimicrobials that are not required for product preservation. 

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For further information and references regarding these points, please refer to the White Paper on Antimicrobials in Building Products published by the Healthy Building Network and Perkins + Will.

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When it comes to adding antimicrobials to our built environment, there are known costs and unproven benefits. We support architects, designers, building owners, and product manufacturers in making appropriate, evidence-based choices to protect public health, and showing precaution when deploying solutions that are not supported by research.