Radon Continues to Plague Americans

  • David Aschenbrenner from Pro-Tech Environmental installs a radon mitigation system. (Photo by Mark Brush)

There’s an invisible, odorless gas that kills 21,000 Americans every year. We’ve known about radon gas for a long time. But as Mark Brush reports, experts say we’re still a long way from fixing the problem:

Transcript

There’s an invisible, odorless gas that kills 21,000 Americans every year. We’ve known about radon gas for a long time. But as Mark Brush reports, experts say we’re still a long way from fixing the problem:

Radon gas is found down here…

…in the basement.

Really, it’s all around us. The gas drifts out of the ground from bits of uranium ore. Normally, there’s not enough of it to cause a problem. But it can get trapped in our homes, schools, and offices. We breathe it in. And the gas can cause lung cancer. It’s the second leading cause of lung cancer next to smoking. And if you’re a smoker – you’re even more at risk.

The level of radon gas in this basement is unsafe. More than four times a safe standard set by the EPA:

So a crew of two guys is here to fix the problem.

David Aschenbrenner works for Pro-Tech Environmental in Ann Arbor, MI. He says radon gas seeps up from the ground and makes its way into the house through cracks and holes in the foundation:

“So as the air is rising through the house, the house acts as a chimney. It’s creating what we call the stack effect. And that’s what’s actually pulling the radon in.”

You can’t see it. You can’t smell it. But it’s often there.

“So with the radon piping, and the radon fan, it’s going to create a suction slightly stronger than the house breathing normally.”

They drill a hole in the basement floor – put a PVC pipe into the hole. And fan on the pipe will vent the radon gas outside.
Right now – a lot of people find out about radon when they buy or sell a house. The air is tested and if there’s a problem – it can be fixed.

Bill Field is an epidemiologist at the University of Iowa. He’s studied the health risks of exposure to radiation for decades. Field says these systems work. But even though more people know about the threat of radon gas – there are still more people exposed today than in the past:

“We’re further behind now, than we were 20 years ago with addressing the radon issue, because more homes are being built that aren’t radon resistant than are being mitigated. Each year there are tens of thousands of home that are coming on the market that will hopefully be fixed someday, but they could have been fixed when they were first built.”

Field says new homes should be built to keep radon out. He says simple changes in home construction – changes that would only add $500 in construction costs – would work. He says there should be a federal requirement to build homes this way, since radon can be a problem in every state.

There are some states, counties and cities that have radon resistant new construction written into their building codes – but more than half don’t – and even in the places that do have the code on the books – workers told us that it’s not always enforced – so it’s easy to just skip the requirement.

The National Association of Home Builders says it would oppose any federal requirements to build homes this way. They say radon should be dealt with where there are known hot spots.

There are parts of the country where radon can be bigger problem than in other areas. But it can be a problem no matter where you are. The EPA has a recommended standard for radon gas. It says that homes or offices or schools should be fixed if they have radon levels of 4 pico-curies per liter or more. But Bill Field says sixty percent of the cancers caused by radon were caused at levels below this EPA standard:

“Talk about a safe level of four pico-curies per liter is really a misnomer. It’s like saying it’s o.k. to cross the road blindfolded because there’s only one car coming instead of three. There really is no safe level of radon.”

A recent report by the President’s Cancer Panel evaluated the progress being made on cancer prevention. Exposure to radioactive radon gas is one of the areas where the experts said not enough is being done. And because the problem is getting worse – they’re recommending the government do more.

For The Environment Report, I’m Mark Brush.

“You can test your air for radon gas by buying a test kit at your local hardware store. They cost between ten and twenty dollars.”

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Obama Pushes ‘Cash-For-Caulkers’ Program

  • A volunteer cuts insulation for a home in Alaska. Under a proposed federal program, homeowners could get rebates for making their home more energy efficient. (Photo by Ben Brennan courtesy of FEMA)

President Barack Obama is pushing for a new federal program that would create a Cash-for-Clunkers like rebate for people who make energy-saving home repairs. The Environment Report’s Orlando Montoya covered the President’s announcement:

Transcript

President Barack Obama is pushing for a new federal program that would create a Cash-for-Clunkers like rebate for people who make energy-saving home repairs. Orlando Montoya covered the President’s announcement.

The program would be called HomeStar. In it, homeowners would be eligible for up to $3,000 in rebates if they hire someone to seal up their attic, install new windows or make other repairs to cut down on home energy use.

The President made his announcement at a community college in Savannah, Georgia. In the audience were contractors that he said could do some of the energy-efficient work.

“These are companies ready to take on new customers. They’re workers eager to do new installations and renovations, factories ready to produce new building supplies. All we got to do is create the incentives to make it happen.”

Administration officials say, the program could cost six-billion-dollars. Mr. Obama wants the HomeStar program included in a bill jobs bill being drafted by Congress.

For The Environment Report, I’m Orlando Montoya.

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Fixing Up Foreclosures

  • Megan McNally in front of her home in Buffalo. She purchased the house for $3,800. (Photo by Emma Jacobs)

In many older cities, some
neighborhoods are known for
their abandoned houses. A
lot of these will decay beyond
repair and end up as debris
in landfills. Emma Jacobs
takes us to one hard-hit
neighborhood, where one house
has become a laboratory for
doing green construction:

Transcript

n many older cities, some
neighborhoods are known for
their abandoned houses. A
lot of these will decay beyond
repair and end up as debris
in landfills. Emma Jacobs
takes us to one hard-hit
neighborhood, where one house
has become a laboratory for
doing green construction:

(sound of climbing steps)

Last year, at age 20, Megan McNally bought a house.

”This is the front room. Um, this is gonna be the bathroom. Doesn’t look like much now. It’ll get there.”


Not just any house. She wanted to find a project in this neighborhood to tie to the environmental science she studied during the year.


While home from college for a summer, McNally had been working with a nonprofit, Buffalo Reuse. It works in a neighborhood of East Buffalo with rows of abandoned homes. She paid $3800 dollars at the city’s foreclosure auction for a small, wood-frame house that had been vacant for three years.

“I really wanted to help some effort in Buffalo and so I was trying to brainstorm and I sat down with Michael and we sort of came up with this idea of buying a house.”

(sound of truck)

Michael is–Michael Grainer, who runs Buffalo Reuse. We make a coffee run and he tells me this neighborhood is part of a city whose population has shrunk by half.

“What we’re trying to do is to build a base of projects that are undergoing some kind of transformation and also lots that are undergoing a transformation.”

McNally’s house looks like it’s in good shape, but it had also taken a lot of abuse.

“On the outside, it looks really great. You could move in tomorrow. But as I came in here the first weekend it was leaks that people didn’t take care of. There was…this floor we had to cut out because it was all rotted from black mold.”

McNally had no prior knowledge of home repair. Transforming this house soon escalated as she found she would be replacing the plumbing and heating. But in some way, she’s also found her lack of experience to be an asset in recruiting help.

Ken Hicks is helping to measure out a part for a radiator in the front room. He turned up near dusk one day last winter. McNally was under the house checking the foundation, and Hicks, a construction worker was helping out the owner next door. He saw her feet sticking out from underneath. When she crawled out they started talking.

“It was a big joke, you know. We went back and forth and I said, you know, it was just so weird to see you in that situation and that situation and that predicament. And we just started from there,”

Slow work during a down economy means Hicks spends more time on volunteer jobs. He’s become one of the main people McNally turns to with questions about plumbing and carpentry.

“Being really young, you can ask a lot of stupid questions, and people go, ‘Oh man, this girl,’ but then go on and like, answer it in a way where maybe they wouldn’t be so open with somebody else.”

“Anything you can possibly do wrong has been done has been done in this house. But all those things that I’m talking about are now corrected, and there’s so much more knowledge here.”

There’s still months of work left, but McNally knows she will be living here soon. She has learned both a lot of construction skills and a lot about teaching, herself. She holds workshops to help the neighbors who are left take on their own properties. Her house, still unfinished, is a good training ground for beginners. McNally also realized people are less afraid to approach her with their questions than the experts she first had teaching.

“It’s hard putting things together. And, I don’t know, there’s been times where you just want to sit down and you get so frustrated that you don’t know how to do something that I think it’s really important to have people there who say, whatever, it’s ok and it’s ok that you don’t know everything, because you know, once you figure it out or ask questions, or just do it (laughs) and hope that things work out for the best, they usually do.”

For The Environment Report, I’m Emma Jacobs.

Related Links

Bricks of Fly Ash

  • Fly ash particles at 2,000x magnification.

A company is using waste from
coal-burning power plants to
make bricks. The firm hopes
to reduce the amount of coal
ash sent to landfills, and,
at the same time, cut the amount
of energy used to make bricks.
Chuck Quirmbach reports:

Transcript

A company is using waste from
coal-burning power plants to
make bricks. The firm hopes
to reduce the amount of coal
ash sent to landfills, and,
at the same time, cut the amount
of energy used to make bricks.
Chuck Quirmbach reports:

The company, Calstar, says it wants to open several U.S. plants which would use fly ash in making bricks for construction and paving. The California firm says its method uses far less energy that traditional clay bricks that have to be heated at high temperatures.

Luke Pustejovsky is a Calstar executive. He insists the quality of fly ash brick meets industry standards.

“We spent 18 months and millions of dollars on durability testing with our own labs, with outside third party labs, and this is a brick that’s built to last.”

But a trade group, the Brick Industry Association, is cool to fly ash brick. The group says the product has not yet met the test of time. The group is concerned any problems that come up could discourage customers from using brick.

For The Environment Report, I’m Chuck Quirmbach.

Related Links

Timber Bandits

  • Last year in Alabama, timber thieves stole more than a half million dollars worth of trees. (Photo by Randolph Femmer, courtesy of the National Biological Information Infrastructure)

The construction slump has meant
less demand for two-by-fours, but
trees are still worth big bucks.
An individual tree can be worth
anywhere from a hundred dollars
to thousands. And Tanya Ott reports timber theft is up
because of the economy:

Transcript

The construction slump has meant
less demand for two-by-fours, but
trees are still worth big bucks.
An individual tree can be worth
anywhere from a hundred dollars
to thousands. And Tanya Ott reports timber theft is up
because of the economy:

(sound of timber truck)

Timber is an important revenue stream for some areas. But from New York to
Washington State, forest managers say timber thieves have been pretty
active. Last year in Alabama, they stole more than a half million dollars
worth of trees.

State forester Linda Casey says landowners might have
earmarked that money to pay off the mortgage or send their kids to college.

“If they have timber stolen they just lost the only chance that
they have to achieve whatever goal that they had designated to use this
money for.”

Foresters say reckless timber thieves also damage wildlife habitats.

States
are cracking down. This month, Alabama will decide on tough new rules that
would make it a misdemeanor to even step on private forest land without
permission.

For The Environment Report, I’m Tanya Ott.

Related Links

Greenovation: Eco-Certified

  • When doing home improvement projects, WaterSense, EnergyStar, GREENGUARD, and FSC certifications are some to keep an eye out for. (Photo by Michelle Miller-Freeck, courtesy of FEMA)

When you’re planning a home
improvement project, you can
be overwhelmed with decisions
about the right materials, the
right quality, and the right
design. Trying to keep it eco-
friendly on top of everything
else just adds to the confusion.
Lester Graham reports it can be
as simple as finding a label:

Transcript

When you’re planning a home
improvement project, you can
be overwhelmed with decisions
about the right materials, the
right quality, and the right
design. Trying to keep it eco-
friendly on top of everything
else just adds to the confusion.
Lester Graham reports it can be
as simple as finding a label:

Julia Weinert and her boyfriend like the idea of making their place nice, but even something as simple as painting causes concerns.

JW: “We want to support environmentally friendly options and we just don’t want to be smelling it for three days out and have to be running the fans. We just want it to be convenient and we think it would be an easy thing to do.”

LG: “Well, you’re in luck. We’re at the local Home Depot and we just happen to have Greenovation.TV’s Matt Grocoff here. Matt, you’ve got some advice for her.”

MG: “And it’s really, really simple. When you’re trying to find a paint that’s healthy for you or another product, you shouldn’t have to be a chemist when you go to the store. There’s a really simple thing you can look for. Just look for the simple GREENGUARD label. GREENGUARD is an independent organization that lets you know with a simple label that that product is safe for you.”

So, none of the really strong paint smells that mean polluting chemicals are being released. GREENGUARD Environmental Institute sets indoor air standards for products and buildings. Julia and I sniffed a can of paint WITH the GREENGUARD label, and then one without.

LG: “I’ll let you sniff first.”

JW: Okay. Oh! Yeah! Oh my gosh! That is ridiculous. I mean, it smells so much stronger than this one. You can’t even smell that one compared to this one.”

A gallon of paint with the GREENGUARD label DOES cost a few dollars more, maybe as much as ten bucks.

Matt then herded us to another part of the store, the plumbing section, where Julia and I were confronted by all kinds of shiny chrome and brass faucets.

JW: “There’s a whole wall, a whole aisle of faucets here and I just don’t know which ones to look for.”

LG: “So, Matt. You got any fancy labels here?”

MG: “Absolutely. Again, if you’re looking for that eco-friendly option, a way to save yourself some money and some water, it’s simple. Just look for the WaterSense label. The EPA does EnergyStar labels for appliances. The EPA also does WaterSense label for plumbing fixtures.”

WaterSense means the fixture – whether a faucet, shower head or toilet – will use less water but still works well.

As we wandered over to the lumber section of the store, Matt told us the last label he wanted to show us is the most ignored label – and it might just be the most important one.

MG: “FSC stands for the Forest Stewardship Council. And what that means is they’ve made a commitment that they’re not going to be tearing down forest and clear-cutting them in order for you to build some bookshelves in your home. This is one of the biggest causes of greenhouse gases is that we don’t have these forests capturing this carbon any more. Instead of having to have a PhD in forest management, you can just simply look for a piece of wood that has an FSC label on it.”

So, labels. Julia says, works for her.

JW: “It’s going to be great, taking my boyfriend around the store and showing him all these cool things I can get to make our home improvements a little more cheap and environmentally-friendly.”

LG: “Alright remind me, go over this again. What am I supposed to be looking for?”

MG: “It’s very simple. If you’re looking for paint, look for GREENGUARD. For plumbing, WaterSense. For lumber, FSC, Forest Stewardship Council certified.”

LG: “That’s Matt Grocoff, Greenovation.TV. Thanks again, Matt.

MG: “Lester, it’s always a pleasure. Thank you.”

For The Environemnt Report, I’m Lester Graham.

Related Links

New Regs for Old Homes

  • The rules the EPA is proposing would apply to homes built before 1978. (Photo source: Daniel Schwen at Wikimedia Commons)

Renovating old homes or apartments can
mean scraping or sanding lead paint.
That lead paint dust can settle where
children play. That can put them at risk
for learning disabilities. Shawn Allee reports why the government’s
tightening rules on home renovation:

Transcript

Renovating old homes or apartments can
mean scraping or sanding lead paint.
That lead paint dust can settle where
children play. That can put them at risk
for learning disabilities. Shawn Allee reports why the government’s
tightening rules on home renovation:

The Environmental Protection Agency just finished rules about home renovation and lead paint, but children’s advocacy groups said they weren’t strong enough.

Anita Weinberg is with Lead-Safe Illinois. She says some rehab contractors are trained on how to handle lead paint safely, but only some property owners are required to hire them. Weinberg says the rules didn’t apply if there were no kids in that unit at the time.


“That’s perfectly fine, but tomorrow you turn around and sell your home to a family with children. And the work that was done, if it wasn’t done safely, there’s certainly the possibility there’s still going to be a lead hazards in that home.”

So, now the EPA’s proposing, if you hire a rehab contractor at all, that contractor must be trained to handle lead paint – regardless of whether children live there now or not.

The rules would apply to homes built before 1978.

For The Environment Report, I’m Shawn Allee.

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Lessons From a Skyscraper

  • Shawn Allee gets a tour of a roof atop the Willis Tower from co-owner John Huston. The skyscraper will undergo a environmental rehab that will include replacing windows, adding wind turbines and cutting overall energy use. (Photo courtesy of Shawn Allee)

You might have heard the Sears Tower
in Chicago is now called the Willis
Tower. But there’s more changing for
America’s tallest skyscraper. Soon,
the Willis Tower will start an environmental
facelift that could cut eighty-percent
of its energy use. You might wonder:
what could a homeowner learn from what
the Willis Tower is doing? Shawn Allee thought it wouldn’t hurt to ask,
and went on a tour for the answer:

Transcript

You might have heard the Sears Tower
in Chicago is now called the Willis
Tower. But there’s more changing for
America’s tallest skyscraper. Soon,
the Willis Tower will start an environmental
facelift that could cut eighty-percent
of its energy use. You might wonder:
what could a homeowner learn from what
the Willis Tower is doing? Shawn Allee thought it wouldn’t hurt to ask,
and went on a tour for the answer:

One of the co-owners of the Willis Tower is John Huston. He says there’s plenty for
people to learn from the tower’s green rehab plans. To start – we’re at the base of the
tower, and we’re craning our necks up.

“We’re facing north. We’re looking at a hundred and ten floors, so that’s 16
thousand windows in total.”

Huston says those windows are the old single-paned kind common in 1974 – back
when the Willis Tower was finished. In the summer, the windows let heat in, and
during the winter, they let heat escape. And that black metal you see in photos? It
does the same thing.

Huston: “The building is clad in aluminum if you went outside in the winter, you
certainly wouldn’t want to wear an aluminum ski jacket.”

Allee: “You’d freeze.”

Huston: “Exactly.”

So, Huston says the first thing they’re gonna do at the Willis Tower is what he calls
“tighten the building’s envelope.” It means insulating the building from the outer
walls and replacing the windows – all sixteen thousand of ’em.

“It’s an incredible job. That’s what we have to change in order to conserve the 80%
of energy that we anticipate doing.”

Huston says energy consultants pretty much give homeowners the same energy
advice. He says, the nice thing is, once you do that it’s easier to figure out what’s
next.

“Watch your step.”

Huston takes me into the guts of the Willis Tower. This is where it’s heated and
cooled. He says since the building’s gonna waste less energy, he won’t need such
powerful equipment.

Huston: “A lot of what’s in here will disappear or shrink.”

Allee: “So what is this?”

Huston: “This is an electric boiler. It provides hot water to heat the building. Each
one of these consumes enough electricity to heat and light a town of 6,000 people.
We have eight of these throughout the building. It’s not just the boilers. in this
section behind us, you have all the pumps that move hot water throughout the
building. Each one of those pumps is hooked to an electric motor, and 50% of them
can be eliminated.”

Huston says the take-away here is that once a building requires less energy to heat
and cool it, the other savings can kind of cascade from that.

But there’s another lesson homeowners can learn from the Willis Tower’s green
rehab.

The architecture firm that planned this project is called Smith and Gill. Gordan
Gill tells me, their work was made easier by the fact the Willis Tower owners keep
records of their power use.

“When you’re designing something new, you’re predicting the performance of
something. Here, you can actually test it, since you have records of how much
energy was spent, how much energy was used – you know where you stand, exactly.
And so now, you can do mock-ups and tests and things like that.”

Gill says that’s a good reason for homeowners to hold onto their power and heating
bills, too. He says if you’re confident in your actual costs and likely savings, you’re
more likely to follow through with your rehab project.

“And that’s important because you’re avoiding the obsolescence of these buildings,
and I think that’s true from everything like Willis to people’s houses.”

For The Environment Report, I’m Shawn Allee.

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Green Roofs Greener Than Thought

  • The rock, soil and tiny plants in a green roof help insulate a building. That can cut heating and cooling costs. (Photo courtesy of the USDA)

Green roofs are a popular, but
expensive, way for building owners
to prove their green credentials.
Shawn Allee reports some
researchers feel they might do even
more environmental good than they
thought:

Transcript

Green roofs are a popular, but
expensive, way for building owners
to prove their green credentials.
Shawn Allee reports some
researchers feel they might do even
more environmental good than they
thought:

The rock, soil and tiny plants in a green roof help insulate a building.
That can cut heating and cooling costs.

Researchers at Michigan State University think they’ve found another
benefit, too.

Brad Rowe says the tiny plants absorb carbon from the air. Rowe says the
plants are small, so this carbon sequestration effect is small, too. But
he says green roofs are still better than plain-jane roofs.

“You have all these roofs everywhere and basically, they’re doing nothing
– they’re essentially dead. So, putting plants on them is one way to
sequester carbon above ground, in the leaves and stems, the roots, and even
in the soil that’s on top of the roof.”

Rowe says if Congress ever puts a price on carbon emissions, green roof
owners might get credit for sequestering carbon – and that could cut a
green roof’s high price tag.

For The Environment Report, I’m Shawn Allee.

Related Links

Energy Audits on the Rise

  • Before paying big bucks for a geothermal heat pump, try a little insulation first. (Photo by Jennifer Dickert)

Architecture firms, engineering firms and other energy
auditors are getting a lot more business these days.
Lester Graham reports… it’s part of a plan to save
energy and cut greenhouse gas emissions:

Transcript

Architecture firms, engineering firms and other energy auditors are getting a lot more business these days. Lester Graham reports… it’s part of a plan to save energy and cut greenhouse gas emissions.

One of the goals of all that federal stimulus money is to make a lot of buildings more energy efficient. First step… get an energy audit. Finding out how much energy a building is wasting has meant a lot of business for people trained to do that kind of work.

Dan Jacobs is with the architecture firm A-THREE-C in Ann Arbor Michigan.

“It’s easily doubled for us in the last year and we’re looking for it to double again as we go into 2010.”

Dan Jacobs says there’s a lot of excitement about renewable energy such as solar panels and rooftop wind turbines … but most buildings waste a lot of energy… so he recommends:

“First thing they want to do is conservation.”

Insulating, replacing windows, and efficient lighting cut energy use. Energy that would still be wasted no matter what fancy renewable energy gadget is put on the rooftop.

For the Environment Report, I’m Lester Graham.

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