When it comes to personal health, you try to exercise and eat your veggies. However, you may not be thinking about one big factor affecting your well-being: Where you live. If the first, second and third rules of real estate are location, location, location, it makes sense that your home be situated in a place that is as far from environmental hazards as possible. Here’s a rundown of the top toxic traps potentially affecting your health and your home’s value.
Major contamination
iAlthough rare, every now and again a cataclysmic event can devastate the environment and make homes in the area uninhabitable. Often times, one can’t predict when or where environmental disasters will occur. For example, the town of Centralia, Pennsylvania, is mostly abandoned after burning waste in a landfill sparked a coal seam fire that still smolders more than 50 years later. When the fire started in 1962, no one could have predicted how long it would burn and how much toxic smoke it would emit.
However, you can take steps to avoid falling victim to an environmental disaster like New York’s Love Canal development. The neighborhood at Love Canal was built on a chemical waste dump. Residents didn’t know the danger until they started getting sick and children were born with higher-than-average rates of birth defects. Before you buy a home, be sure to check the county or city real estate records to see who previously owned the land. You can do this by going down to the local register of deeds office or even visiting the local government website if it has the records available online. Be on the lookout for red flags, such as past ownership by a chemical company, manufacturer or even past use by an owner operating a gas station or dry cleaner.
Toxic energy
Living near a coal or nuclear power plant can put you at increased risk for exposure to dangerous water and air pollutants or even radiation.
Of the top 100 dirtiest power plants in America, 98 are coal-fired. Coal plants in particular release toxins such as mercury, arsenic, chromium and lead. These toxins can leach into the groundwater and cause neurological damage, kidney failure or contaminate local fisheries. Gaseous emissions from power plants can contaminate the air and trigger respiratory diseases such as asthma or lung cancer.
Although nuclear energy is widely considered safe, direct radiation and ingestion of radioactive isotopes are a concern in the unlikely event of an explosion. Experts recommend a 10-mile buffer zone between your home and a nuclear power plant.
Other pollution sources
Living next to a major highway increases your exposure to air pollutants and noise pollution. It’s estimated that proximity to a freeway or railroad can even reduce your home’s value by 10-15 percent.
Although studies have not shown any direct threat to health from wind turbines, anecdotal evidence supports the idea that noise from the turbines could cause headaches, dizziness and loss of sleep. The term “wind turbine syndrome” has even been coined to describe similar symptoms reported by those who live close to wind turbines.
Since the late 1970s, rumors have suggested a link between living close to power lines and an increased occurrence of childhood leukemia. Studies in the late 1990s and early 2000s largely debunked the idea as a myth. However, this is one myth that is persistent enough to bring down property values.
Elizabeth Kerr is a contributing editor on www.justenergy.com.
