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Healthy Homes
First of all, the Canada Mortgage and Housing
Corporation (CMHC) has some excellent resources on healthy homes. See their
website at www.cmhc-schl.gc.ca for the
copyright notices. I've included several pages from their site below:
Healthy
Housing Fact Sheets offers a room-by-room plan to make your house healthier for both you and the environment.
Moisture
and Air: Problems and Remedies is a
well-illustrated booklet published by the CMHC with thirteen chapters.
(Note that chapters 1-3 overlap, as do 12-13. For copyright reasons, I was unable to alter this. Copyright 2000-2002:
CMHC)
Attic
Venting, Attic Moisture, Ice Dams
Fighting Mold
What You Can Do
around Your House to Alleviate Asthma
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This link will take you to the US
EPA's Indoor Air Quality site, specifically the section on mold resources: www.epa.gov/iaq/pubs/moldresources.html
For more
general indoor air quality resources and advice (on indoor air pollution in
homes), check out the wide variety of publications at www.epa.gov/iaq/pubs/index.html#homes.
See their publication on cleaning air ducts and James Dulley's column, "To
Clean Air Ducts, or Not To?"
And the same
Indoor Air Quality site offers A
Home Buyer's and Seller's Guide to Radon.
For information on hazardous
waste sites, superfund sites, and toxic air emissions near your potential home
or home site, see the colorful EPA maps
at http://maps.epa.gov/EnviroMapper.
For
information on your watershed and the aquifer that supplies your groundwater,
see http://www.epa.gov/surf2.
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Two excellent
links for lead paint issues (Adobe files):
1. www.epa.gov/lead/leadpbed.htm
(several brochures)
2. HUD's Lead Paint Safety: A Field Guide for Painting, Home Maintenance, and
Renovation Work (84 pages, prints much larger than screen view), at http://www.hud.gov/lea/LBPguide.pdf
. This was written and illustrated by Dennis Livingston, whose nationally
renowned print book Maintaining a Lead-Safe House can be obtained
directly from him at Community Resources in Baltimore by calling (410) 727-7837. It is also available in Spanish.
See also MassHousing's Get the Lead Out Program (zero-interest loans to
qualified home owners for lead remediation), at http://www.mhfa.com
(click on Home Ownership).
Note that even low lead levels that were until 2003 thought to be safe, have
been found to lower IQ and cause endocrine disruption. See the LA Times article
of April 17, 2003: "Safe" Lead Paint Lowers
IQ in Children, Study Finds.
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A well-documented article that
gives a good overview of mold issues: Is Indoor Mold Contamination a Threat to
Health?
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Pressure-treated wood (treated
with chromated copper arsenic) is used in decks, raised garden beds, gazebos, and children's play
structures. Even older decks made of pressure-treated wood need to be sealed
regularly to prevent children from picking up the chemical on their hands and
ingesting it. The EPA and lumber manufacturers are
discussing (February 2002) a voluntary phase-out of pressure-treated wood
products (article on
phase-out). Check out a list
of resources on this issue.
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For information on the health
effects of wood smoke, see www.burningissues.org.
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