Rx for Homes : Environment: A top architect says we must build nontoxic homes for our own--and the planet’s--good.

It started with the best of intentions. In the housing boom after World War II, homes were air-conditioned for comfort, closing the windows in the process. After the energy crisis of the 1970s, houses were made energy-efficient, producing a new array of insulations, paints, sealants, caulks and adhesives to do the job.

American houses were becoming as snug as a submarine.

They were also becoming polluted. Even poisonous. The new synthetic building products, dispensing a toxic soup of chemicals into airtight buildings, have created a new problem--the “sick building syndrome”--that can threaten the health of its occupants.

The prescription, say environmentally conscious architects and builders, is to go back to nature and natural building products.

“Grandpa really knew how to build houses--he didn’t use all these sophisticated, man-made materials that pollute the environment,” said Jerry Miller, owner of Environmental Projects--a 20-year-old architecture and building firm in Laguna Beach. “Grandpa used wood and stone and concrete and glass.”

Paul Bierman-Lytle, a nationally renowned environmental architect, lamented: “We are not very civilized in the way we use the planet. We are petroleum fiends when it comes to building materials. We have to start changing the way we build and the way we consume.”

His Masters Corp., headquartered in a concrete-block warehouse in New Canaan, Conn., builds custom houses with such features as nontoxic, low-toxic and natural building materials; energy-efficient heating and cooling; air filter systems designed to remove pollutants, and an overall computer management system that makes the traditional thermostat look prehistoric.

And, having spent the past few years scouting Europe for manufacturers of natural building products, Bierman-Lytle has assembled a comprehensive assortment under one roof. He recently opened Environmental Outfitters, a resource sales center that sells more than 2,000 products, including petrochemical-free paint, insulation from seawater minerals, untreated wood products and stains made with citrus peel, linseed oil and berries.

The growing movement toward designing “healthy homes” is long overdue, said Bob Berkebile, chairman of the American Institute of Architects’ new environmental committee. “The Environmental Protection Agency research lab has identified 60,000 chemicals that we are exposed to all the time and don’t react to very favorably.

“We’re just now starting to look at the toxic soup we have created,” he said. “Eventually, we’re going to have to rethink all the building materials and building systems we use.”

Right now, Bierman-Lytle’s clients fall into two groups: those who want--and can afford--to make an environmental statement (natural products can add as much as 35% to the construction costs of a new house), and those suffering from such an array of chemical sensitivities that one allergist has described them as the “canaries in the coal mine.”

But Bierman-Lytle sees a bright future for healthy houses, despite the obstacles of higher costs and an entrenched housing industry, where change occurs slowly.

“There is going to be a gigantic public demand for environmental standards in houses,” he said. “It’s already happening. A year ago, we were getting 25 to 30 telephone inquiries a week about healthy buildings. Now we’re getting around 150 calls a week, and a lot of media attention.”

An increasing number of Miller’s Southern California clients are requesting natural materials for their homes, the builder/designer said. “People are becoming more educated about the health hazards of products such as petroleum-based paints, particle board and formaldehyde,” he noted.

Particle board, commonly used to make cabinets, “is put together with formaldehyde-based resins that release known carcinogens into the air,” Miller explained. Paints, he added, are only 10% substance--”the rest is carrier that we breathe as it evaporates into the environment.”

Adds Bierman-Lytle: “The production rate of synthetic chemicals is truly awesome. There are 1,000 new products on the market every year. Most of them are petroleum-derived, and we have found that a lot of them produce indoor pollution.”

Like a chemist-detective, he said he looks for radon, biogenic particles, organic particles and vapors, water and environmental tobacco smoke. Bierman-Lytle cited some of the materials he uses: natural linoleum from Scotland, 100% cotton carpeting in soft pastels from Germany, cement and seawater roofing slate from Belgium, formaldehyde-free boards from Oregon.

Compounding the danger of the myriad chemicals introduced to homes since Grandpa built his 60 years ago, Miller said, modern structures “practically have to be hermetically sealed to meet today’s strict standards.

“Building codes require that windows and doors cannot leak air under any condition,” Miller said. “Airborne chemicals and second-hand smoke just get trapped.”

“Sick building syndrome” is less of a problem here than in other areas of the country, because Southern Californians are not as reliant on heating and air-conditioning systems. “We open our windows a lot,” Miller pointed out. “People who live in cold or humid climates are stuck in airtight boxes much of the year.”

Back in the good ol’ days, houses were simultaneously better insulated and better ventilated. “The walls were thicker, but they leaked a little air,” Miller said. “Houses could breathe.”

Bierman-Lytle has been an environmental pioneer since he arrived at Yale Architecture School in 1975 with the desire to build energy-efficient houses that didn’t look like engineering labs.

“The solar houses of that period had a lot of panels on the roof and dripping, humid tanks inside,” he said. “They just didn’t take off.”

He began designing houses that produced their own energy instead of draining it from the earth. Working with two other students, he got permission to depart from the regular program and build his first passive solar house.

His building, a towering New England farmhouse with an expansive glass front, silvered wood siding and small-paned windows, was featured in Architectural Digest as exemplifying how architects could marry solar technology with beautiful design. “That,” he said, “was exactly what we wanted people to think about our work.”

He left Yale with his Masters Corporation business already going, but it wasn’t until the mid ‘80s that he began to realize that his elegant solar houses were also toxic.

He is a builder as well as designer, and he was increasingly bothered by coughing and sneezing when he was finishing a floor or painting cabinets. Installing fiberglass made his eyes itch.

“In the building trade, this is considered part of the business, but we started to ask questions,” he said.

He also paid attention to a little-heralded 1984 report for the Department of Energy, which stated that indoor air pollution was produced, in part, by such building materials as carpeting, particle board and paints. That was “the first indication that we were working with toxic products,” he said.

During a six-week teaching stint in Germany in 1985, he met the “green” movement. “My students introduced me to manufacturers of paints and finishes that didn’t contain formaldehyde and solvents. They were producing products we didn’t have. It’s an alternative movement, tucked away in small places in Germany, Belgium and Scandinavia.”

The trip was pivotal for Bierman-Lytle. He imported the products, convincing clients that, despite higher costs, they were better. In addition to environmentally pure houses, he was building a reputation. “A safe house can look like anything--it can be Egyptian, it can be Colonial, it can be a farmhouse,” he said. “This differentiates it from the solar movement.”

His environmental litmus test is threefold:

Is the house a health hazard to the occupant, the producer or the installer?

Is it a renewable resource?

Is the waste biodegradable?

Having established himself as an upscale builder, he hopes to apply the research to the houses in the moderate price range. Already, he has been doing some consulting work on large-scale projects.

He is co-writing a book, “Home Safe Home,” and predicts that environmental health will be the cutting-edge issue of the ‘90s, pointing out that real estate transactions already include questions about radon and asbestos.

“Americans like building homes,” he said. “We do it quickly on a large scale, but we are doing it badly in terms of health and energy efficiency.”

Just how gigantic the public appetite for healthier houses will be in the ‘90s is up for debate, but nobody denies that the “green building” movement is developing momentum in the counterculture of Southern California.

“We need to think globally: I am developing a database of green products, green techniques and green people in the building world,” said Terry Kennedy of Venice, a longtime builder and environmental consultant who has launched a monthly newsletter, “Green Building News.”

Based on months of research on building issues, he predicts a wave of “resource-conservation practices.”

“There are little creative centers all over,” he said. “(Green) products have been out, and people have been thinking about this for a long time.”

And at Eco-Home, a Los Feliz demonstration home and resource center for ecological living in the city, director Julia Russell reports getting “more and more inquiries from people looking for architects with a background in ecological design and construction.”

“People seem increasingly concerned about the quality of their living space,” she said. “Not just aesthetically, but in terms of health.”

But the National Assn. of Home Builders, whose members turn out about a million single-family houses a year, isn’t predicting any environmental face lift for the 11,000 products that go into a typical house.

For one reason, “healthy houses” are too expensive, said Donald F. Luebs, who, as technical director of the NAHB National Research Center, has an overview of the entire range of building technologies.

“It’s true, we are using finite (building) resources, in the broadest sense,” he said. “If you say ‘carpet,’ if you say ‘kitchen flooring,’ siding on the house, everywhere you look there are plastics and forms of petrochemicals. In most cases, the natural materials that they copy are vastly more expensive nowadays.

“There’s no question that indoor air quality is a problem, and I think the concern with it will continue to grow. The whole science of the air quality issue is really low on the learning curve, as far as these chemicals go. We may have to do away with some.

“But you can’t take petrochemicals out of our lives--they are inherent in our standard of living. We are not on the breakthrough of any drastic changes. Things don’t change fast in the building industry.”

Miller agreed that the cost of an all-natural home would be prohibitive for most people. “Only the upper echelon can afford to build custom homes,” he said. “I can’t approach large-scale developers, because they have so many problems just putting together a relatively inexpensive home.”

However, he hopes that as people become educated about indoor air pollution, more and more homeowners will demand safe, natural materials--thereby resulting in the mass production of such products as formaldehyde-free wood.

“It’s all a matter of economy of scale,” Miller said. “If seaweed insulation and natural-wood cabinetry were widely used, they would be more affordable for the population at large.”

Times staff writer Susan Christian contributed to this story.