Health Product Declarations, demystified

5 min read
Published: September 12, 2025

Ever been asked for an HPD at the eleventh hour and felt your stomach drop? You’re not alone. Health Product Declarations sit beside EPDs on bid checklists, but they shine a spotlight on material ingredients rather than carbon. Nail them and you keep your products in play for LEED v5 projects and municipal healthy-materials mandates. Miss them and your spec can vanish faster than popcorn at a movie night.

A labyrinth made of factory icons and arrows leading to a central clipboard, symbolizing ingredient data collection.

HPD 101: The Elevator Pitch

A Health Product Declaration (HPD) is a standardized, four-page form that lists every intentionally added ingredient in a building product and flags any red-listed chemicals above 100 ppm. Think of it as a nutrition label for construction materials, only the calories are VOCs and heavy metals (HPDC, 2025).

Why Architects Keep Asking for It

Design teams want low-toxicity products to hit WELL and LEED Interior Materials points. LEED v5 Draft BD+C now offers up to three points for products with public HPDs, double the credit in v4.1 (USGBC, 2024). Skip the paperwork and your rival’s drywall could steal the spotlight.

HPD vs EPD: Cousins, Not Clones

Both documents ride the transparency wave, yet they answer different questions. An EPD quantifies environmental impact over a life cycle. An HPD reveals what is inside the product today. Pair them and you cover both planetary and human health angles. Some federal agencies now require the duo on pilot projects (GSA Pilot Memo, 2025).

Anatomy of an HPD: What Goes Where

  1. Summary Page: Product name, version date, compliance scope.
  2. Content Inventory: CAS numbers, percentage ranges, hazard scores.
  3. VOC Emissions and Certifications: Greenguard, CDPH v1.3, or none.
  4. Disclosure Statements: Plant locations, residuals, qualifiers. A single line error can boot your submission from the HPD Public Repository, so proofreading is non-negotiable.

Data Wrangling Without the Migraine

You will need Safety Data Sheets, supplier letters, and occasionally lab tests. Chasing tier-two suppliers often eats 70 percent of project hours according to HPDC’s latest practitioner survey (HPDC, 2025). Smart teams centralize requests and set a two-week response clock. We have seen firms stall for months because one pigment vendor ghosted the chain, dont be that firm.

The Payoff: Faster Specs and Fatter Pipelines

Healthy-materials credits influence roughly $450 billion in North American construction bids each year (Dodge Data, 2024). Manufacturers with published HPDs report a 12 percent higher spec-conversion rate on average, a figure echoed by the 2024 Sustainable Minds market survey. Reliable numbers beyond the US are still thin, but early signs in the EU mirror the trend.

Takeaways Worth Taping to the Wall

  • An HPD is your ingredient list, not your carbon passport.
  • LEED v5 bumps the value of a public HPD to up to three points.
  • Supply chain responsiveness is the number-one delay, plan for it.
  • Pair HPDs with EPDs to hit both health and climate checkboxes. Healthy disclosure is rarely easy, yet the alternative is watching your product collect dust in the spec drawer.

Frequently Asked Questions

What hazard thresholds trigger mandatory disclosure in an HPD?

Any intentionally added substance above 100 ppm and any residual above 1,000 ppm must be listed, unless falling under a defined exemption (HPDC, 2025).

Can one HPD cover multiple product SKUs?

Yes, if the formulations are chemically identical and produced in the same facility within the declared scope. Otherwise you need separate HPDs.

Does an HPD expire?

Yes. It must be updated at least every three years or sooner if the formulation changes more than 10 percent by weight (HPDC, 2025).

Is third-party verification required?

Not required, but a verified HPD earns extra points under LEED and is preferred in mindful MATERIALS, boosting market credibility.

What data granularity do I need for an HPD?

Report each intentionally added substance to 0.01 % of product weight, including CAS numbers and any residuals above that threshold.

Does an HPD expire like an EPD?

Yes. HPDs require renewal every five years or sooner if the formulation changes, mirroring the typical EPD cycle.