Carl Brahe
Most residential properties and neighborhoods are clean, but even the most pristine and affluent areas can have environmental issues that affect health and home values. Ninety three per cent of homes in this country are found to have no known sources of environmental pollution. Most of those that have known sources of pollution are easily remediated. I commonly receive calls from people across the country worried about health problems originating in their homes. They are usually concerned about mold, or meth labs , although these are only two sources from a long list of possible indoor toxins. Most of the people who call report nothing that would indicate either of these and I’ve been unable to help.
Now I offer a low-cost environmental report that is pinpointed to each individual home by address or latitude/longitude. Reports of known toxic contamination of soil and water can help identify possible causes of health problems and the fixes. I have added Residential Environmental Reports from EDR, the nation's leading and most trusted provider of environmental risk information reports, to my offering of services. They search all the available databases and compile a report within 24 hours detailing all known environmental hazards within 300 feet of a property, and all the known sources of pollution up to a ½ mile. This includes things like leaking underground tanks, dry cleaners, metal shops, Superfund sites, landfills and meth labs to name a few.
A report on my house checked 13 databases. The most common source of pollution is leaking underground tanks. According to the EPA, fumes from chemicals stored in these tanks can escape into the air up to 100 ft. away. Solvents used in dry cleaning and metal polishing pass through concrete floors as if they were cloth into the water below and can spread long distances. Natural, underground water flows can distribute toxins in all directions. These chemicals rise through the soil in the same way as radon gas and can fill living areas.
After completing the certification course to provide these residential environmental reports, I ran a few sample reports to become familiar with them. I found my house is in an area with no known environmental problems. My daughter’s house is within ¼ mile of a dry cleaner. I ran a report for my parent's last home where they lived for about 25 years. I was stunned to find that their home listed at 0 feet from a Superfund site and a proposed Superfund site . Between 300 ft and ½ mile there were 4 leaking underground tanks, 1 EPA Superfund site, 1 proposed Superfund site and 1 hazardous waste treatment storage site.
All the information for the environmental reports is available free from public sites. I decided to familiarize myself with some of the sites by checking the individual databases for details. I found that looking up all these reports from the various sites and figuring out how to interpret them could be a major undertaking. I spent an hour trying to find the reports I was looking for and decided to do it the easy way. I emailed my account manager at EDR , and asked for the details on the Superfund listing of my parent’s home where I spent several of my teen years. She emailed a 133-page file that informed me, with some digging, that the aquifer that supplied the entire city of 33,000 was only 30 feet down. EPA tests conducted in late 1986 detected trichloroethylene, tetrachloroethylene, trichloroethane, methylene chloride, and chloroform in the ground water that had spread from 20 blocks away to my parent’s home. This is from only one of the more than half a dozen potential pollution sites. My mother developed diabetes in her sixties and died at 72. There was no history of the disease in her family and the women are long-lived. Her sister is 87, very active and healthy.
I wonder if our ignorance shortened our mother's life or diminished the quality in her later years. It’s a moot point, but my imagination can concoct images of strange vapors, spawned from the combination of a whole list of toxic, carcinogenic chemicals, being sucked through the sandy dirt of the crawlspace beneath her home, by the chimney action of the gravity furnace drawing combustion air. We’ve learned a lot since then. Simple adjustments in the dynamics of our indoor environment provide healthier, more comfortable living while using less energy than in the past. Ignorance of what is in our indoor environment has proven dangerous. Knowledge leads us to better, healthier living.
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