Checking pollution risks gets easier for home buyers

January 27, 2008 - There is a developing movement to investigate pollution sources in the neighborhood before you purchase a home.

"The review [of local environmental hazards] has long been a standard part of the commercial real estate industry," said Rob Barber of Environmental Data Resources. "In the past two or three years, the practice has begun to bleed its way into the residential real estate market."
Barber is chief executive officer of EDR, a Milford, Conn., company that analyzes local, state and federal hazard records to give home buyers a sense of potential environmental problems on or near their prospective property.

EDR's environmental risk reports, available through some home inspectors, cost around $150. But you can also get at least some of the same information for free by going to a page run by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (epa.gov/enviro) or by going to scorecard.org, which was launched by the non-profit environmental advocacy group Environmental Defense in 1998 and is now owned by Green Media Toolshed.

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