New industrywide clay brick EPD launched

The Brick Industry Association (BIA) has launched a new industrywide clay brick Environmental Product Declaration.

The EPD contributes toward LEED v.4.0 and v.4.1 materials and resources requirements. The EPD has been third-party certified and published, reflecting data associated with the manufacture of units that comply with nearly every currently active ASTM clay brick specification, according to a news release from BIA.

“The Brick Industrywide EPD represents the average environmental impact of clay brick production in the U.S. and Canada,” the release says. “The data for the EPD captures 32% of 2018 brick production submitted by 13 different manufacturers from plants in 14 states and provinces in the U.S. and Canada. The range of data includes brick formed by the stiff-mud and soft-mud processes and includes brick made in tunnel and periodic kilns.”

Products from an industrywide EPD are valued by LEED v4.1 as one whole product for the purposes of the credit achievement calculation. LEED v4.0 awards a value of one-half for these products. A total of 20 products are required on a project to receive this credit.

New York City has two very large buildings dedicated to answering the 911 calls of its five boroughs. With more than 11 million emergency calls annually, it makes perfect sense. The second of these buildings, the Public Safety Answering Center II (PSAC II) is located on a nine-acre parcel of land in the Bronx. It’s an imposing 450,000 square-foot structure—a 240-foot-wide by 240-foot-tall cube. The gleaming aluminum cube risesthe equivalent of 24 stories from behind a grassy berm, projecting the unlikely impression that it might actually be floating. Like most visually striking structures, the building has drawn as much scorn as it has admiration.