The following is a home owners and buyers list of essential questions to assist spotting `red flags':

• Is the home you purchased, or had designed and built, actually conforming to your plans, good engineering, good IEQ, and design standards? Is it really a 'green building'? Can you substantiate that with monitoring data from published, scientific methods? Click on our `Risk Reality Survey' tab above, to get a feel for types and scope of common, ubiquitous problems.
  
• Does it have a high L.E.E.D. rating or was it built 'green'?
  
• Was it built with modern doors, windows and sealants to make it as energy efficient as possible? Can the seller or builder state the ventilation rate?
  
• Does the builder/seller have any monitoring data addressing these important issues that should be part of the basis for calling it a `green' home?
  
• Do you have baffling environmental problems, illnesses, or odors?
  
• Did building inspectors fail to do their job?
  
• Did previous occupants or owners use water or air purification hardware? Why?
  
• Is it in a remote area on a well that has had only one initial test required by the local health department?
  
• Does it have asbestos, lead based paint, lead plumbing, `green' arsenic treated wood, or treated with pesticides?¹³
  
• Has it been territory marked by an animal with obnoxious, toxic, life shortening substances?
  
• Are you seriously considering modifications for maximizing longevity and minimizing ill health?
  
• Is one or more of your family too tired or sick too often?
  
• Have you (the buyer) spent too much time, money and misery in Doctor's offices?
  
• Are you fed up with bills for drugs while your chronic illness remains?
  

If any of the above are true, then you are living in a home that will worsen in time with corresponding increases in ill health. To expand on the above list click on the 'Risk Survey' tab at the top of the page and take the appropriate survey. Our services will give you the tools to make it a refuge from the myriad of known, harmful substances, common in today's world. Such an optimized dwelling will also protect occupants from malicious or accidental `spills' of dangerous substances. We employ published scientific methods to easily attain and maintain homes that not only 'look' clean but test clean and are as insult free as possible. Unlike medicine, Industrial Hygiene solutions have no side effects, and last the life of the unchanged environment. We keep up with emerging renewable technologies that can make improvements in both old and new buildings, and pay for themselves from energy savings alone. Read on and call* us at (303) 421-3383 for more answers, gratis.

This Is What You Are Facing - The Problems' Scope!

In fact, homes that appear spotless can be filthy and often contaminated with pesticides, cat & dog antigens, dead animals, insects, dirty ducts, solvents, fuels, and smog, mold, radon, lead, estrogen mimicking compounds, asbestos, etc., which are beyond the capabilities of 'building inspectors'. More common sources of problems include household products. They have been found to contain 60,000 dangerous chemicals!⁷ During manufacture, these chemicals require compliance with OSHA regulations for worker health & safety as well as compliance with hazardous waste disposal rules for their waste residues. We can advise you of free and low cost alternatives of many of them.

Far and away, America's homes are a long way from being `optimized' for health and longevity. Greg Marsh, son of an Architect, Mr. E. C. Marsh; started seeing this as a kid. Further enlightenment came later in a major government toxicology research laboratory, university research studies, on the job training, and in disease statistics from the Center for Disease Control (CDC) Atlanta. Click on the `Link' tab above and click on www.cdc.gov. See `Links' above for many more important, free resources.

So what needs to be assessed? Essentially no problem insult (contaminate) cannot be identified and quantified with published, reproducible, Scientific methods that come from a variety of national and international sources. We assess, within the client's budget, starting with the least expensive to quantify that are also the mostly likely to be present at harmful levels. These are frequently Below Regulatory Concern (BRC), but above medical concerns. This is entirely Scientific judgment based on over 38 years monitoring and assessment experience, from industry, government (environmental research), academia, and private, Scientific epidemiologic research. Such an assessment may include chemical, biological, radiological and physical risks. The list of analytes is limited only by the clients' resources. The following is a partial list of substances and conditions we assess and publish in our reports based on our visual inspections, client wishes, client's Doctor's needs, ubiquitousness, assessment cost, client budget, and risk:

• All exogenous allergens (from with external sources, e.g., plants & animals),
  
• Asbestos, airborne, waterborne and in solids,
  
• Biological agents,
  
• Chemical agent & chemical weapons,
  
• Clandestine monitoring of contamination,
  
• Combustion compounds, including carbon monoxide, and soot,
  
• Contaminated building conditions due to poor indoor environmental conditions, or `Sick Building Syndrome'.
  
• Contaminates from attached garages,
  
• Contaminates from flooding or chronic, excess humidity, including mold & bacteria, bad design, or marijuana cultivation
  
• Chronic deterioration of built environments,
  
• Clothing and fabric contamination,
  
• Diesel emissions & noise,
  
• Dirty HVAC ducts,
  
• Estrogen mimicking compounds,
  
• Feed lot odors,
  
• Filth,
  
• Fire residues remaining after restoration,
  
• Food, crop and soil contamination,
  
• Gasoline and solvent vapors migrating indoors from contaminated aquifers,
  
• Gasoline tank contamination,
  
• Leaking Underground Storage Tanks (LUSTs) and their toxic gasses (VOCs) in buildings,
  
• Medicine contamination and strength,
  
• Metals (toxic) in water and airborne,
  
• Mold and bacteria,
  
• Oil and grease in soil,
  
• Paint vapors,
  
• Pesticides and their residues,
  
• PM₁₀ & PM_2.5,
  
• Radioactivity of building materials and building sites,
  
• Radon, ambient and dissolved in well water,
  
• Skunk odors, and politicians,
  
• Temperature swings,
  
• Tobacco residues to establish smoking,
  
• Toxic building materials,
  
• Vapors from carpet mastics,
  
• Volatile Organic Compounds (VOCs) some specified above,
  

The above can also be done piecemeal, over a period of time to accommodate tight budgets.

American homes are built without: IAQ standards; commissioning, tracking medical effects; baseline monitoring; nor monitoring for insults other than radon, lead & asbestos; nor even the use of non toxic building materials; nor concerns for ventilation until 2004. Add Architectural negligence, indifference, and pesticide pretreatment of new homes, one cannot expect much. With blockage of the proposed OSHA IAQ standards in 1994, from the pesticide industry and building owners & managers (BOMAs) your risks of preventable injury gets much worse. But it gets even worse: Underground solvent plums, from industrial sources, are tainting homes with dangerous levels of Volatile Organic Compounds (VOCs), from tainted shallow aquifers.

Fear builders whose name starts with `Rich...', as they are arrogant, disrespectful, use remediation firms without independent oversight, nor publish supporting monitoring data. This same firm built almost 3,000 up scale? homes in Superior, Colorado, on expansive (bentonite) soils with an untested process of using structural floors. This is the placement of the basement floor well above soils, thus creating a large hidden space that is atmospherically coupled to living spaces above that will sooner or later collect water, mold, bacteria, bugs and vapors that migrate into living spaces above. Rather than solve these problems they bribed the Colorado State Legislature to cap damage awards at $ 250,000, minimizing a new home owner's legal recourse. Few people realize these facts until preventable exposures have manifested themselves as serious illnesses, just after the one year warranty expires!

Homes are built with toxic materials: Asbestos, lead plumbing and finishes; by the lowest bidder, which designers, builders, inspectors, and lenders do not monitor, understand, nor respect. They never conduct follow up medical studies of folks using their creations; nor, with a one year warranty, do they care as they have no liability nor expertise in such important matters.

Architects & builders have a very long history of knowingly specifying toxic substances & defective designs: to wit: asbestos; lead paint and plumbing; formaldehyde; arsenic & creosote treated wood products; implementation of new and untested solutions of structural floors to deal with expansive [bentonite] soils, while creating bigger problems from mold & bacteria, to name only a few. Architects, builders and building materials manufacturers will ignore or fight changes in the use of toxic materials regardless of customer benefits. Customers request what home builders, building materials manufacturers etc., advertise, while foolishly thinking the government is controlling risk! Harmful exposures go way beyond asbestos, lead, and radon. They include: Pesticides, aging of the structure & appliances, neighborhood environmental changes such as leaking underground tanks & new highways, wetting, and remodeling. A little progress is being made after years and years of litigation from watchdog groups. This forced a few regulatory agencies to live up to their mandates and stop being industry sycophants. Combined, synergistic risks of groups of insults are much greater than the sums of their individual risks. Research has found it to be closer to the mathematical product rather than a simple sum of all insults' risks. Slowly, insurance companies and litigation, are forcing removal of: Green colored, CCA wood, treated with copper, chromium, & arsenic; underground storage tanks; chlordane and creosote anti termite treatments for wood products; and radon. But this simply is too little too late. To maximize life one must identify and control as much as is known.

Laws try to control where homes may not be built, due to unacceptable environmental conditions, but developers, influence peddlers and dirty money frequently subvert weak regulatory processes in place.^{1, 11.1, 15, 37} Some of them are downwind of military and nuclear weapons production and testing facilities, including homes in remote areas of central Alaska, and in cities like Albany & Troy, NY, that are down wind of Chinese and Nevada nuclear test sites, respectively.^16.1 Many more building sites become contaminated long after construction, from migration from unforeseen sources. Much of this is due to empire building by greedy little unprepared bureaucrats who are pushed by greedy, unprepared morons from local chambers of commerce and their developer friends. Lack of enforcement leads to bad places to live long after development is finished. We have no suitable response to a new home buyer with alarming problems when he states: 'Why should I have to have a brand new home tested?'.

In the high rent district of Chicago's North Shore, chunks of friable asbestos, from previous illegal dumping in Lake Michigan, is washing ashore! These shore line curiosities are subsequently carried into nearby up scale homes by children and the ignorant. Across the country, large old & and new neighborhoods are being discovered with toxic plumes beneath them not unlike Love Canal, N.Y. More recently, concerns are growing about underground plumes of toxic solvents streaming off military, nuclear, government, and industrial facilities' leaking underground storage tanks and improper dumping. How bad and prevalent can it get?, see: The Day We Bombed Utah.

The CEO of Thoro Chemical actually went to prison after industrial solvent plumes from his facility were discovered almost two kilometers away after migrating underneath & through residential neighborhoods. Sometimes the source is much farther off. Research has identified gasoline station plumbs 6 kilometers off site, and airborne plumbs of 2,4,D, the infamous herbicide (half of Agent Orange), still sold everywhere to anyone, migrating 20 kms! Solvent plumes can also be sources of explosive levels of toxic gasses when accumulating inside a dwelling.¹⁵ These are particularly diabolical as inside concentrations grow slowly, masking normal bodily warnings but not the medical consequences of chronic exposure. To make these common, dangerous situations a lot worse, the U.S. E.P.A. has used a very bad computer model from dubious sources, here and in England, to ascertain health risks to occupants. This model frequently underestimates risks by a factor of as much as 400 times,¹⁶ causing E.P.A. risk managers to give a clean bill of health to poisoned dwellings. Our comprehensive assessment program would never allow this. I.H. surveillance methods are thousands of times more revealing than visual inspections by skilled tradesman in finding sources of carbon monoxide, leaking plumbing, mold, bacteria, temperature problems, and ventilation deficiencies. Industrial Hygiene solutions never have side effects, pain & suffering, and last the life of the unchanged environment. They increase property value too!

Some environmentally linked diseases are very frightening, not the least of which is breast cancer. This disease strikes when one is exposed to their cancer specific insult(s) at levels that exceed their resistance. We know one lady, an American college educated member of Brazil's ruling elite, who had a pre cancer, double mastectomy because her mother died of the disease. Had she instead conducted a full environmental optimization of her environments, the whole family would have realized reduction in all environmentally linked diseases and many other risks, including other cancers; increased their life spans; reduced medical bills and suffering; and saved lots of money.

Many diseases that, are strongly linked to environmental exposures, reduce life span and quality of life including: Parkinson's, see: www.pdf.org/aboutdisease/overview/symptoms.html; Lung disease, see: www.lungusa.org; Lupus, see:www.lupus.org/education/cause.html; Cancer, see:www.nci.nih.gov/cancerinfo/prevention-genetics-causes.causes; Many more, see: www.cdc.gov/exposurereport; to name only a few. The continuing development of computers and computer managed research data, as well as the ever growing results of the Human Gnome Project, are greatly expanding known links between environmental insults and many common diseases.

It is a well known fact that chemical, biological and radiological pollutants accelerate aging by increasing stress & illnesses. Much less known is the Marsh axiom: "Life ends when one is exposed to one more insult than is tolerable, and we are constantly being exposed to multiple insults that can be greatly minimized at low cost." Another: The difference in sensitivity to an insult between the least and most sensitive person is commonly as much as a factor of 1,000,000 times. It follows: Those who contract cancer and other diseases were exposed to levels of agents that were above that person's threshold of tolerance. The good news: Today's Science can easily and reliably detect such substances, even at very low levels.

The incidence of birth defects and serious respiratory diseases, such as asthma, are growing alarmingly and are themselves a very sensitive measure of the presence of certain environmental contaminants. For example, some common household substances, such as pesticides and detergents, are now known to mimic estrogens that cause alarming, irreversible damage to the unborn, including male sterility, as well as compromised immune systems.¹⁴

Biologicals, usually called microbes, are living chemicals which are very troubling and worrisome to the Scientist and Physician for several very important reasons that started with the findings (Wash your hands now!) of Dr. Ignaz Semmelweis, ca. 1845. Nobody, including Doctors, would listen to his message. In about 1880, Dr. Louis Pasteur proved, beyond a shadow of doubt, exactly why Semmelweis was right long after he died. Microbes are everywhere all the time; they are very dynamic in species and number; their ability to multiply under common conditions is exponential; some are 'extremophiles' that live above 100 degrees Celsius; and like chemicals, are invisible & odorless at dangerous concentrations. They can also remain dormant for a long time or die off, leaving toxic remains, and have been around for hundreds of millions of years. Some are very toxic and insidious, e.g., mold and their associated mycotoxins and mVOC emissions. Emissions from dogs & cats, sometimes with delayed health consequences appearing much later in life, making their etiology very difficult in the absence of a Physician's allergy test data. This is the basis for their use as biological weapons, as well as a leading cause for the alarming growth in lung diseases. Fortunately, Science has identified most of them, numbering in the 100,000s. The solution is a proactive, routine, monitoring program patterned after the quality control methods of a potable water provider BEFORE health problems occur. Monitoring should continue until the environment is well enough understood to plan a reduced, strategic, routine monitoring program that fits one's budget while providing adequate protection. This is called 'results driven monitoring'.

To be adequately protected from harmful microbial exposures, one must employ appropriate monitoring methods to identify and quantify viable, respirable and non respirable mold & bacteria. Quantitation of bacteria can reveal such things as yet undiscovered leaking sewage pipes and heating and cooling systems, etc. Mold problems are very dangerous and pervasive. They can be fatal and have been linked to Sudden Infant Death Syndrome (SIDS). See www.policyholdersofamerica.org, from our `Links' page, and read Melinda Ballard's story about her battle with invisible, one celled animals in their new 22 room mansion. To this day, they are still trying to recover their health. She was cheated by the designer, builder and engineer before her insurance carrier tried to do the same. Their `band aid' solutions resulted in a grand victory in a negligence trial. This is one unforgettable story and what the insurance company tried to get away with. The jury awarded her $32,200,000!

Radiologicals are very ubiquitous, odor free, invisible and usually occur as Naturally Occurring Radioactive Materials (NORMs). Like asbestos, lead, and mold, they are a gift from Mother Nature. Research has shown radon to be the second greatest cause of lung cancer after smoking. Radioactivity's greatest danger is when 2.5 micron and smaller airborne, radioactive particles are trapped in the lungs, such as radon decay products and fugitive dust from ordinary mining operations. Radioactivity can be found in all types of property, well water, and in certain kinds of building materials. Common household things can also contain radioactivity, such as certain glazes on china. All unassessed environments have these pervasive dangers.

Radionuclides are also very troubling when undiscovered in private well water, exempt from the Safe Drinking Water Act (SDWA), because the well serves to few people. Well water laced with them, and usually other toxic substances, create a `synergistic effect'¹⁷, which is very much greater than the sum of individual risks. Some isotopes replace elements in bones making them radioactive, a condition considered impossible to reverse. A colleague discovered a home in Colorado's front range whose bathroom would exceed the E.P.A. guideline (which is unenforced) of 4 pico Curies per liter by 2000 times in the course of one 5 minute shower! The victims, including two teenage boys, had been exposed to these levels for 16 years prior to discovery.

What have regulatory agencies done to limit these exposures? The same thing they did when they found out the dangers of asbestos, discovered in 1940! Far too little, far too late.Dangers attached to NORM exposures are stated in terms of risk of mortality to laboratory animals from cancer while other dangers, such as birth defects, are ignored. Many are only guidelines, which are not enforced, are also based on animal studies.

Important as it is, forty-four percent of Americans drink `potable' water from providers that get a `D' or `F' for the quality of the reports they file to regulatory agencies as required by the Safe Drinking Water Act (SDWA).¹⁹ Further, chlorinated drinking water research has demonstrated that chlorine, and its byproducts, are putting hundreds of thousands of pregnant women at great risk of birth defects and miscarriages.²⁰ Additionally, a large proportion of consumption comes from small wells serving fewer than 25 people. Colorado requires only one test for bacteria, regardless of well depth, geology, or scientific logic, after it first clears and are exempt from SDWA reporting. Small wells are also not required, under the SDWA, to ever be tested for radiologicals even when in an area known to have risks of radioactivity! The most common victims of under tested water are wealthy people who can afford to build in remote places and have their own well. Folks in a big city ghetto never have this problem! Protective well water management includes many complex variables requiring a unique sampling and analyses program consistent with the SDWA. Our services meet these criteria.

Guilty Parties - Who Are Your Friends?

Can Physicians find the sources of your environmental insults? Yes, at 10 to 20 times greater cost than an I.H. with his monitoring assistance and instrumentation. But Physicians do not make house calls nor are they willing to ask for nor accept scientific services from outside their own profession. This includes I.H.s, Forensic and Environmental Chemists that would greatly expedite proper diagnosis of their patients' difficult environmentally induced maladies. They even choose to ignore sources of critical information in their own professional journals and colleagues.²³ Ask your holistic or otherwise Physician, Allergist, or Chiropractor, for the last time he/she retained the powerful services of an Industrial Hygienist to assist with a patient with a difficult environmentally linked illness. Aren't Doctors guilty of at least two crimes: The sins of omitting the fact that practical, low cost I.H. solutions are available; and the Hippocratic Oath `I will do no harm', for omission of low cost solutions that work?

It gets much worse. How often do medical practitioners misdiagnose from lack of knowledge of a patient's environmental conditions; or are even trained in this important field? Ask your Physician about his/her environmental training and their use of monitoring data from their patients' environments. See: www.questionabledoctors.org for criminal actions against Physicians in your State who are rigorously protected by big, selfserving medical associations. These have been recently made public on the InterNet by Dr. Sidney Wolf, M.D., after a major 30 year battle.

Sadly it is up to the patient to insist on I.H. services under the guidance of the treating Physician. Unfortunately, nearly all Doctors are Prima Donnas, who refuse to communicate with the Industrial Hygienist already studying his patient's environment! Really!

Even Dr. Doris Rapp, M.D., bless her heart, refused to use the words `Industrial Hygienist', even once in her 635 page book¹⁰ which is 90% pure Industrial Hygiene science. And she failed to state the fact that virtually all I.H. services are permanent and totally free of "side effects". No one has ever been injured from using an environment, known by monitoring to be free of insults. When taken to task on this issue, she admitted that Doctors were too proud [sic]. Send a SASE for our letter and her response.

Doctors and their societies give lip service to `preventive medicine', but do not support Industrial Hygiene title protection in the State of Colorado. They do not pressure the insurance industry to cover the real 'preventive medicine' of environmental assessments under 'Doctors' services' for their patients whose illness is suspected or known to be linked to environmental contamination. Additionally, they have never provided serious support for the `School Environmental Protection Act of 2001', When was the last time Physicians supported any professional outside their own?

Unlike some I.H.s, very few Doctors even optimize the use of their software to diagnose & track maladies and their prevalence distribution among their own patients' data. Such findings could be reported to health departments or written up in an article for publication for the betterment of the whole community. Throughout history they have even rejected or ignored findings of their own colleagues, including Dr. Ignaz Semmelweis,²³ who successfully employed tracking statistics, to isolate and identify the cause of 'child bed fever'.

Could Architects and Engineers solve these problems? Yes, with assistance and oversight of an Industrial Hygienist expertise and I.H. instrumentation. This doesn't happen unless the buyer is astute enough to demand it. The painful, life shortening toxicity of asbestos was discovered in 1940, but Architects and their colleagues continued to specify it until banned by unrelated regulatory agencies in 1980. Ditto with lead based paints, plumbing hardware containing too much lead, and lead sweated copper plumbing. They have contributed nothing to the discovery of building related human diseases. This includes ASHRAE standards for IAQ, which are solely based on olfactory responses among that part of the healthy, adult population that can actually participate in their human exposure tests, that are conducted in large, dirty, filthy, toxic urban places! They cannot grasp health problems resulting from their creations as the concept is also wholly foreign to their training. They refuse to perform 'baselining' for new buildings, that would not only protect their own interests and improve the next structure, nor as a part of building commissioning, unless the new owner is astute enough to demand it. As Dr. A. Einstein reportedly said: "A problem cannot be solved with the same kind of thinking that created it".^23.1

Nor do they care, beyond their personal liability, as their work is only guaranteed for a year! In fact, the offices Architects selected for their State headquarters for the major American architectural institute in downtown Denver stank and functioned so embarrassingly bad they had to move out before the end of their lease! This was a beautiful, high end, newly remodeled19^th century building. They then moved into a much newer, high end office building that was so contaminated with asbestos it could be seen in the elevator shafts! This building, the joke of local I.H.'s, also housed some of the State Attorney General's staff! See their web site: www.aia.org, and search with 'indoor air quality', 'indoor environmental quality' 'IAQ'. Also check their roster of classes for Health, Safety, and Welfare (HSW) training seminars for periodic, required, continuing education credit for license maintenance. None Exist! They offer no courses for addressing a structure's possible environmental problems in spite of astronomical cost to users.²⁵

Optimized homes are a first line defense against spills of dangerous materials outside, indoors or out, intentional, accidental, or otherwise. Optimization also controls insults in the home where most time is spent, a fact made clear in studies by the U.S. E.P.A. It is cost effective, and doable. The scientific process of identification, control, and removal of insult sources, followed up with ongoing, planned, preventive measures, verified with subsequent monitoring and analyses, is the only way to eliminate life shorting insults and minimize aging. If you are what you eat, than you will succumb to what you breath. The mass of that breathed is much greater than the mass of that eaten. Lungs are perfect traps for toxic particles, vapors, aerosols, and gasses. In fact, it takes at least five different types of OSHA sampling technologies to replicate how substances are trapped by the lungs!

Optimization is a Scientific process comprised of four steps: Characterization; remediation; follow up monitoring; and management planning for permanent, ongoing control of conditions that cause IAQ to deteriorate. We provide the keys to all, sometimes with eloquent, no cost/low cost renewable energy solutions that quickly pay for themselves with substantial ongoing savings for the life of the structure. Solar collectors can now look just like the building to which they are attached and have only one moving part.

We provide initial assessment, remediation oversight, and follow up analyses to assure that all work done is functioning as designed and that no outstanding insults remain that were previously obscured. This is called `results driven optimization. When fully applied, our IAQ services will turn your environment into an oasis. Our procedures were identified in a major national study on the effectiveness of 62 different techniques in ten categories for effectiveness to 305 folks with Multiple Chemical Sensitivities (MCS) <sup>21</sup>. Techniques we apply are 100% congruent with the only two methods that provided `major or enormous help'. They also address elements of 4 of the top 7 treatments. The study: `MCS Treatment Evaluation Survey of 305 Participants', was conducted by Dr. Leonard Jason, Ph.D., DePaul University, Dep't of Psychology, Chicago, IL, in 1995. Send a large, self addressed, stamped envelope for a copy. We will not respond to a P.O. Box return address.

Simply put `all homes, schools and work places built or occupied in the absence of independent oversight from an Industrial Hygienist, with relevant expertise, are necessarily subtracting from longevity, and quality of life; while increasing preventable pain, suffering, sicknesses, and usually energy consumption. It matters not if the abode is large or small, rich or poor, old or new. All homes, lacking I.H. I.E.Q. oversight, even if untouched by unexpected events, will necessarily deteriorate, just like a car without proper maintenance. It is very easy for our firm to specify control techniques that reduce harmful environmental concentrations of insults by a factor of 100 to 100,000 times. These safety management tools come from industry 'engineering controls' techniques that have been protecting workers for a long, long time - some from the 19^th century. Such old, proven controls can be scaled down for residential applications that are very low cost, reliable, and effective, just as required in the industries they come from.

Some useful advice for those implementing optimization of built environments. Patients is a virtue: Competent Microbiologists, Chemists, other Scientists, and laboratories are becoming fewer and fewer. They cost too much and have too little return on their investment(s). We have lost at least four Senior Scientists in the last 20 years who had more than a century of combined experience in Chemistry. This has increased the time and costs needed to obtain quality data and results. Fortunately, technological developments have improved some of these problems. Very sadly many very high quality Scientists, in key positions, tend to live their own life buried in an obscure lab, out of touch and communication with the rest of society, and potential clients, for a number of reasons. These include hostilities to the less educated, the opposite sex, those whose power vastly exceeds their knowledge and preparation (many lawyers, politicians, engineers and architects), and abysmal social and communication skills. In fact, it's not uncommon to encounter attractive 60+ year old women scientists who are still virgins! How pathetic! Some will admit that a Ph.D. knows more and more about less and less, as a nephew with a Ph.D. in vibration engineering from M.I.T. with honors, but will admit he knows nothing about noise! A major part of our services is to act as an English speaking liaison between such Scientists and laymen.

Independent Scientists and NGOs are very important and very well liked by society. Regulatory agencies continue to set and enforce fewer and fewer health and safety standards of all kinds, nor have they conducted necessary, relevant, overdue, supporting research. Sometimes this is due to societies failure to vote in new taxes. Tragically, the age old problem of incompetent morons and self serving politicos at the top are still making minor and major policy decisions, that hurt us all with collateral damage of real professionals leaving critical regulatory agencies. One of the best examples of this phenomenon is the highly publicized 'The air at ground zero is safe[sic]' from Christy Whitman, Administrator of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, when she knew it wasn't nor could it have been even remotely possible. Society was not fooled by her attempt to shift the blame to her vast scientific staff and now see her as a new hitler. Terrorists 2957: Whitman/Bush 100,000s over the next 30 years.

Feel free to call with questions after reading this section. From time to time we get calls from concerned folks who follow the philosophy of our message, sometimes for a long time, who are trying to make the best environmental decision, but have no monitoring data. Although we can be seen as the 'Physician of your environment(s)' it is impossible to give recommendations or otherwise help choose between the lessor of evils in the absence of relevant, scientifically valid monitoring data. It would be very rare indeed to conduct even a simple assessment on a small environment and not find data that were unexpected and unnecessarily dangerous. How could a Physician advise someone who's not been seen? Additionally, such people have biases (preconceived notions), lack relevant education (how many go to college to study Chemistry?) and fail to realize that overlooking the 'right bunny' is a recipe that always fails. How many know or implement the scientific process correctly? The solution starts with establishment of a budget as soon as possible so the benefits of longevity and energy savings start quickly.

For Do It Yourselfers with limited budgets, wishing to start an effective home monitoring & optimization program, ask about our instrument rentals. We have a variety of instruments, using laboratory grade technologies, not to be confused with stuff from a hardware store, for rent to responsible parties. With our instructions, one can save time and money properly quantifying key, common `indicator' substances. These are real, calibrated instruments that produce laboratory grade data. Simply give us a call, (303) 421-3383, and we will ascertain how to help you.