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A Literature Review on the Health Impacts of Wood and Mass Timber Buildings

This paper is a literature review of the available scientific and industry literature on the documented health impacts of wood and mass timber in construction, such as indoor air quality, cognitive performance, and reduced stress.

About

In response to the pressing need to reduce the environmental impact of the built environment, there has been growing interest in using bio-based building materials, including mass timber. Apart from potentially offering a lower carbon footprint compared to conventional structural materials, one emerging area of research is the potential positive and negative health impacts that mass timber may have on building occupants. 

For decades, research has linked building materials and designs to the health and well-being of occupants (Nakanishi et al, 2024). This cross-disciplinary topic brings together researchers and experts from diverse disciplines such as material science, design, engineering, environmental psychology, psychiatry, environmental health, and public health. There is a robust and growing body of work on the linkages between human health and the built environment. While there is a larger body of work on the health impacts of wood used in the built environment more broadly, few studies have looked specifically at mass timber. Additionally, when mass timber buildings have been studied, the research is focused heavily on mass timber used in commercial, educational, and public buildings, with relatively fewer applications in residential construction. As a result, research on its health impacts in residential settings is still limited.

This paper is a literature review of the available scientific and industry literature on the documented health impacts of wood and mass timber in construction. The key health impacts discussed are:

  • Improved indoor air quality
  • Improved thermal comfort
  • Enhanced cognitive performance
  • Reduced stress levels
  • Physiological relaxation

Acknowledgments

This research was conducted by researchers at the University of Washington. The initial draft of this work was completed in September 2024. It was supported by funding from the Laudes Foundation and the European Climate Fund as part of the Forest to Buildings project. We thank Mona Menadi and Peter Fraanje from Built By Nature (BbN) for their role in conceptualizing and providing feedback on this literature review and white paper. Kathrina Simonen from the Life Cycle Lab at the University of Washington also provided a review of the final document. The UW team would like to thank the Carbon Leadership Forum for their commitment to disseminating this work.

A Literature Review on the Health<br /> Impacts of Wood and Mass Timber<br /> Buildings
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Authors

  • Karisha Shahnaz Hariadi
  • Stephanie Carlisle

CRediT authorship contribution: Writing — original draft, Formal analysis: K.S.H.; Writing — review and editing: S.C.; Methodology – K.S.H., S.C.; Investigation – K.S.H.; Conceptualization, Project Administration, Funding acquisition – S.C.

Competing interests statement: The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.

Citation

Hariadi, K.S., & Carlisle, S. (2025). A Literature Review on the Health Impacts of Wood and Mass Timber Buildings. Carbon Leadership Forum, Bellevue, WA. https://hdl.handle.net/1773/53047

Copyright

Published under Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International (CC BY-SA 4.0)

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