The Health Product Declaration (HPD) continues to be on the move in the green building industry, and it’s growing in the architectural glass sector, as well.

The HPD Collaborative is set to release HPD v.2.0 to the public in to late-October, right around the time the GreenBuild International Conference & Expo 2014 commences in New Orleans. The first HPD was released at GreenBuild 2012.

According to HPDcollaborative.com, the HPD is “an impartial tool for the accurate reporting of product contents and each ingredient’s relationship to the bigger picture of human and ecological help. … The HPD objectively defines the critical information needed to support accurate supply chain disclosure by manufacturers and suppliers, and informed decisions by building designers, specifiers, owners, and users.”

Architectural glass industry companies such as View, Viracon, Guardian and Safti-First have adopted HPD practices as a result of an increase in demand from designers.

Safti-First vice president of marketing Diana San Diego says her company’s implementation of HPDs “is in response to the growing transparency movement within the architectural community.” She adds, “Architects are starting to request these documents from manufacturers, and we wanted to accommodate their request.”

While the public will have to wait until next month for the new version, the beta-release for the Collaborative’s Manufacturers Advisory Panel (MAP) is set for mid-September, according to HPD Collaborative technical liaison Jennifer Atlee. As a result, members of the MAP may be able to premier their new HPDs at GreenBuild.

“We’re on track for launch and pleased with how far we’ve come,” says Atlee. “We’ve been working closely with manufacturers on the panel throughout the development process and many changes to the HPD are a direct result of this collaboration.”

HPDs provide consistent and transparent information in a standard format—information that includes product ingredients and health hazards.

In a recent letter to designers, HPD Collaborative executive director John Knott outlined work items the technical committee for the new HPD have been focused on to improve the second version, which included the simplifying and modification of language in documents.

Annie Bevan, CSM, LEED Green Associate Certification and operations manager at GreenCircle, adds that the revisions being made will help streamline the HPD creation process and “make it more user-friendly.”

Because manufacturers have to go back through their supply chain to gather information for an HPD, Bevan says that the biggest challenge with HPDs continues to be the unwillingness of many suppliers to disclose information that is often proprietary. The new HPD is intended to “help manufacturers with issues in their supply chain,” says Bevan.

Bevan adds that there is a sense in the HPD community that many manufacturers are holding off from publishing HPDs until the new version comes out—something Knott elaborated on in his letter.

“While some manufacturers have demonstrated their leadership by publishing HPDs for their products, many additional manufacturer leaders are working behind the scenes to test and improve the standard; ensure quality supply chain information; address in-house legal issues; and tackle challenges, such as establishing best practice for completing an HPD for complex assembly products,” says Knott. “These efforts will help to ensure HPD v2.0 is a meaningful upgrade. Indeed, this is new territory for all of us—and we are learning together how best to address the limitations of and possibilities for the existing materials ecosystem.”

To learn more about the HPD, visit HPDCollaborative.org.