Working World

Four years ago, Los Angeles magazine chose The Green House in Hollywood Hills as its DesignHouse 2005, a contemporary house meant to be a “blueprint for a nontoxic healthy habitat.” It was designed by Jim Chuda, an environmental architect, whose other projects include a Malibu beach house for fellow activist and good friend Olivia Newton-John, a solar town concept, and a water garden park in Hawaii.

The Green House is also the home of Jim and his wife, Nancy Gould Chuda. Over a dozen designers, contractors, decorators and landscapers collaborated to create it, “utilizing building materials and techniques that are protective of human health and the environment.”

The house was built and furnished with natural chemical-free materials, recycled woods and tile, sustainable/renewable woods such as cork and bamboo for the floors, clay plaster walls, natural stone and glass. The kitchen has formaldehyde-free floors and countertops and cabinets with veneer woods from sustainable/renewable forests. The lights and appliances are low wattage and low amp and the house has solar panels linked to a computerized system that monitors and manages the energy used throughout the house. There are natural fiber draperies and beds with organic mattresses. The garden is pesticide-free with edible foliage such as citrus and avocado trees, as well as decorative plants and a water garden adds to the Zen simplicity of the home’s design.

Tours of the home in 2005 raised money for the Chudas’ nonprofit organization, which promotes awareness of children’s environmental health.

Jim and Nancy lost their only child, Collette, in 1991 to a rare disease when she was only five years old, and they believe that something in the environment may have interfered with their daughter’s development and triggered Wilm’s tumor, a nonhereditary cancer. They have devoted their lives to promoting awareness of the growing incidence of childhood cancers and environmental toxins. With the help of several celebrity friends, including Olivia, they raised money and began the Collette Chuda Environmental Fund to support research on environmental toxins and their effects children’s health.

One of the first results was a 1994 report by the National Resources Defense Council called “Handle With Care: Children and Environmental Carcinogens.” In 1996, this study and others persuaded Sen. Barbara Boxer to author changes to the Toxic Substances Control Act that increased protections for children, pregnant women and the elderly.

Armed with scientific research, the Chudas formed the Children’s Health Environmental Coalition, since renamed Healthy Child Healthy World, which is dedicated to protecting the health and well-being of children. They promote awareness about possible environmental dangers and share information about strategies and products that create a healthier environment.   

Nancy is the daughter of Lenore Breslauer, who helped found the antiwar group Another Mother for Peace. “My mother, God bless her, really helped me process my grief through activism,” Nancy said in her mother’s 2003 obituary in the Los Angeles Times. In her teens, Nancy wrote a low-fat cookbook; the book tour was an opportunity for her to warn of  the dangers of additives and pesticides. She became a broadcast journalist in the 1980s and married Jim in 1984. She was very active in backing the Big Green Initiative (Proposition 65) in 1990 during Colette’s illness.

Through Healthy Child Healthy World’s efforts to educate parents, support protective policies, and encourage people and communities to make wise choices, the Chudas are honoring their daughter’s memory by taking action to improve the world.    

Suzanne Ridgway is a freelance writer and regular columnist for Working World and Working Nurse magazines. Suzanne also writes grant proposals for nonprofit organizations.